Derby: Markeaton Park Summer Sessions music festival with star-studded line-up can go ahead

Top stars including Jess Glynne and Faithless will perform at Derby Summer Sessions 2025 in front of up to 10,000 people next summer.

Other stars taking to the stage on dates in July include Simple Minds, Rag’n’Bone Man, UB40 featuring Ali Campbell and The Human League. Tickets are on sale.

Next year’s show follows on from its “huge success” earlier this year which saw Tom Jones, Madness and Becky Hill perform at the park.

A hearing was held on Wednesday (December 18) after Derby City Council received one complaint from a member of the public about a licensing application it received by concert organisers Live Nation (Music) UK Ltd.

The application called for permission to hold the event and sell alcohol at the park between 10am and 11pm. No other objection was received. It is usual practice for a hearing to be arranged by the council should there be any objection over a licensing application.

A resident wrote to the council: “I live 10 to 15 minutes away from the park and during the summer (I think it was called Summer Sessions) the noise from the park carried considerably. The noise is very loud (louder than I would play music in my own house) and to have it until 11pm is too late (bearing in mind construction noise needs to be ended by 6pm).

“I would like the council to consider declining the licence completely or, if the license is granted, to have that end at a suitable time (e.g. 8pm) so as to avoid disturbing local residents’ sleep/evening wind-down time.”

The objector did not attend the licensing hearing but did provide more information to all parties before it was held. It was also heard how Live Nation wanted to put on further shows to bring more artists to Derby following the success of Summer Sessions this year.

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The meeting also heard the objector tried to call a dedicated event telephone number during the concerts, but the call was not answered.

Joe Robinson, director of operations at Cuffe and Taylor (part of Live Nation), said: “Within the event control room there are various representatives from the event management team, security team, medical team and noise management team etc. Within the function is a resident phone line which was manned by the event logger.

“It’s a very busy room dealing with lots of dynamic situations. And in this particular instance, sadly, that call was not answered and was not resolved appropriately like other calls we may have received.

“We are happy to commit to have an independent resource to man that phone line throughout to make sure no calls are missed. That is the obvious solution to this particular challenge.”

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Councillors agreed that a premises licence should be granted based on a condition being imposed stating: “A telephone hotline staffed at all times by a Designated Resident Liaison Officer will operate during licensable activities”.

Councillor Richard Hudson from the General Licensing Sub Committee told organisers: “Thank you for bringing this to the city. It’s got to be right because it’s going to happen again next year.

“We don’t want any negative headlines or anything that could cause stumbling blocks because, in Derby, we’ve not really had this kind of thing before. I do hope it is a success.”