Company behind Skipton Gateways Festival goes into liquidation

Gateways Event Ltd, organisers of the recently postponed Gateways Festival and The Great Yorkshire Dales Proms, which was to take place in Aireville Park in the first weekend of September, has gone into liquidation following the collapse of two closely connected companies.

Kate Ellis, of insolvency practitioners Ellis Breese, appointed as liquidator to administer the liquidation process, said the company had tried to resolve its financial difficulties.

She encouraged people who had bought tickets to contact their credit or payment card providers and added 'understandably dissatisfied' people who carried out extreme online abuse against the organisers may be reported to police.

Ms Ellis said: “It appears that the festival organisers Gateways Event Ltd have faced considerable financial challenges and have worked very hard to resolve these. Unfortunately, the financial failure of StagedUK and Festickets has directly damaged the viability of Gateways Event Ltd.

“I am currently trying to determine the position between Gateways Event Ltd and Festicket Ltd to ascertain where certain creditors sit. I encourage Festicket customers, in the first instance, to contact their credit card providers or payment card provider to determine whether a charge-back can be claimed."

She added: “There are ticket holders who understandably, remain dissatisfied. Regrettably, some have taken to online abusive behaviour even to the extent of death threats. Any such occurrences will be referred to the police for full investigation.”

Collapse of the festival organisers came after the supplier of the event staging, StagedUK, experienced financial difficulty and ceased trading in July 2022, despite a deposit being paid in advance. This forced Gateways Event to postpone its 2022 festival until September 2023, with customers allowed to transfer their tickets and receive additional free tickets.

Separately, Festicket Ltd, the company's ticket agent, financially collapsed and was placed into administration in September 2022. Festicket Ltd held a proportion of customers’ ticket money at the time of its collapse.

Once the decision to postpone the event was made, Gateways Event refunded a number of event contractors who had made payments direct to the company.

Specifically, these were the contractors for The Kids’ Zone, food traders, and non-food traders. A refund was also made to Skipton Business Improvement District (BID) and volunteers’ deposits were returned.

Refunds were made to ticket holders who had purchased tickets from local outlets, as well as any customers who purchased direct from Gateways Event. Gateways Event also paid as many people who worked for them as they could.

Due to the company indemnifying Festicket for all costs and losses in relation to event cancellations and customer charge back charges it is unclear if Gateways Event will be able to prove as a creditor in the administration.

Considerable sums were paid in advance to artists and contractors. Gateways Event has approached each of them to request refunds, given the collapse of Festicket.

This would have enabled the company to process refunds to the customers who had requested them. Sadly, only a small amount of money has been refunded, and not enough to process the refund amount required.

Gateways Event has approached lenders and private investors but has not been successful in funding the business any further.

As it does not have the financial capacity to refund Festicket customers or continue trading, it has been left with no choice but to put the company into liquidation. All creditors that the directors were aware of have received written notice.

Unfortunately, ticket holder details were unable to be obtained from the administrators of Festicket Ltd before the liquidation of Gateways Event due to data protection (GDPR) regulations. Steps will now be taken to obtain these details and contact the ticket holders.

For enquiries:Email: gatewaysevent@ellisbreese.co.uk, or telephone: 07541 55 62 89