Chow Down Leeds 2021: Tickets on sale for Chow Down food and drink festival at Temple Arches Leeds for 2021

Director Stu Butterworth opened Chow Down in Leeds city centre at the end of July last year as a venue 'designed around Covid'.

The purpose built outdoor drinking and socialising space attracted over 30,000 people during the summer, and it will now be allowed to reopen on April 12 as part of Boris Johnson's roadmap to bring England out of lockdown.

Posting on Monday, March 1, the organisers said: "We are back!

"After a long wait, we are SO happy to be finally setting a date for our re-opening.

"On Mon 12th April, we will open our doors once again for a summer of Chow Down at Temple Arches."

Tickets go on sale at 9am on Tuesday, March 2 on the website www.chowdownevents.co.uk

Mr Butterworth said that the news announced by the Prime Minister on Monday (February 22) is positive for venues such as his at Temple Arches, but possibly not for others who don't have as much of an outdoor luxury.

He added: "Broadly speaking, it's positive that there is a roadmap of the way out of this.

"We're fortunate as we designed our venue around Covid and it was set up as a purpose built outdoor space, but other venues don't have that luxury.

"It really is great for us though and although it is still condition dependent that we can open in April, we can start to look forward to opening.

"We have a lot of covered areas and we designed the space to cover for the pandemic restrictions and the weather.

"However, more needs to be done to support the majority of venues in the wider industry with no or limited outdoor spaces because it's going to be really hard to last until May for them.

"They will find it really tough and some just won't reopen if it's not worth it, for example it's going to be really difficult to work with these rules in a small beer garden space."