A FOUR-DAY festival expected to attract up to 4,000 Volkswagen enthusiasts to the Royal Cheshire Showground at Tabley has been given the go-ahead by the council.

The Dubbed Out Festival will be held from Thursday, July 27, until Sunday, July 30, and will end at 11pm each night except Sunday, when the licensed element of the event will close at midday and visitors will leave by 6pm.

Cheshire East's Licensing Act sub-committee was told four objections had been received to the application for the premises licence for the event at the showground off Flittogate Lane.

No objectors turned up to speak at the meeting but concerns related primarily to noise from music and traffic.

Germaine Williams, director of the company running the event, told the committee: "We've built the largest Volkswagen community in the UK with about 48,000 members and we regularly host events for our members – about four a year. This is the flagship of the events that we host."

He said they wanted a licence for up to 5,000 people to attend.

"It's pretty much the same as the event we held at Ashley Hall. It was a fantastic event, absolutely no problems whatsoever, ran like clockwork, a handful of noise complaints but that's to be expected when you put a weekend festival on," said Mr Williams.

He said when he had read the objections about this event he realised people assumed it was going to be a music festival.

"It's really not," he told the committee, adding 900 children attended last year.

"It's a great family event. We have children's entertainers, fairground, storytellers, children's disco, we have a main stage for the large marquee where we have some fantastic bands."

Cllr Lesley Smetham (Gawsworth, Con) asked how traffic was going to be managed.

Mr Williams said: "The beauty of this site is that we have about a mile of roadway on the site itself."

He said this would mean there would not be congestion on the road.

When Cllr Smetham asked who would be monitoring the music levels, Mr Williams said the event would be ending at 11pm and he had also made his phone number available.

The council's environmental protection officer told the committee she did not have any concerns about the event.

The meeting took place on December 12, but the decision notice has only recently been published.