Slam Dunk Festival 2023: Organisers release full report into health and safety issues at Leeds festival

Following the 2023 edition of the Slam Dunk Festival North at Temple Newsam, which saw performances from acts like Enter Shikari and The Offspring, many festival-goers turned to social media to express their concerns over issues they encountered during the one-day event.

Guests were worried that the festival might have been oversold, as they reported that food queues, toilet sanitation and accessibility were not up to the expected standards.

In a lengthy report, organisers have addressed a number of the issues in the hopes of improving future events.

In the report, organisers said: “Thank you for giving us the time to fully investigate the events of Slam Dunk Festival 2023.  We have taken that time to work with our internal team and many external partners, firstly to work out why things went wrong and then find solutions and improvements for next year.

 “Please let us be clear that we are not trying to pass the blame of anything to other people, we are simply telling the truth about what caused those issues, so you can be assured we have identified the problem and therefore are able to fix it.

 “We would like to stress that we take full accountability of everything that happened on the day, and we are so sorry that some people didn’t have the experience that they should have. We hope you give us the chance to change that.

 “Please believe us when we say we were all deeply personally affected by what happened. After working so hard on this event for over a year in advance, to see how unhappy some people were was distressing for us. Slam Dunk is a small independent company and the end result you see is produced by so many different companies we bring in to help us run it, but we accept the buck stops here.”

Addressing the matter of the festival being oversold, the report said that both sites (Slam Dunk South and North held in Hatfield Park and Temple Newsam respectively) are designed to hold 30,000 people each, but that the festivals had actually never reached those numbers before.

It adds that they work closely with both the sites and the local councils to ensure that all health and safety measures are met, and overselling the event would mean a risk of losing the licence for future years, as they guarantee changes to improve the flow of people and increase the size of the sites.

The punk festival has also vowed to make a number of changes to their food vendors for the 2024 edition, after complaints of lack of vegetarian and vegan options and long waiting times.

Festival-goers wrote in the days following this year’s festival that they had experienced “30-minute queues” to the portaloos, which “were on a slope causing them to rock”, as well as urinals leaking onto the festival grounds as early as 3pm.

In the report, organisers addressed the issues, saying: “We always go well above and beyond the suggested numbers for toilet requirements for events in line with industry guidelines. We can assure you there were more toilets this year than there have ever been. However, with the additional people and due to how they were distributed throughout the site, some blocks were very busy and couldn’t cope with the numbers whilst other blocks were much quieter.”

It continued: “Next year we will have at least 25% extra toilets above the industry guidance based on the number of attendees.  We are also exploring better ways of distributing them across the sites.  There will be additional taps at all waterpoints.  We will also improve communication on the day to direct customers to toilet blocks and water points that are less busy, and of course ensure the map is correct.”

Another major change put in place for next year is that parking will only be available for customers who have pre booked tickets in a bid to reduce queues and chaos when hundreds of cars leave the area at the same time.

Addressing security issues, Slam Dunk acknowledged guests' concerns and comments, and they are conducting discussions with their security providers.

They added: “It is our priority to make everyone in attendance feel safe, and although we provided new security points for people to assist with this, we realise that our communications about these did not reach everyone and will be improved in the future.

 “We are confident in these changes and updates and hope that they will reassure you in returning to Slam Dunk Festival.”

Ending on a positive note, organisers said that the first bands for the 2024 line-up with be announced in a few weeks, with a number of limited time discounted tickets for everyone that attended this year’s festival.