Neighbours of a large Herefordshire festival due to start in just over three weeks’ time are fighting what they say is the late-night noise and anti-social behaviour it generates.

London-based TVF Limited had again applied for a licence to host HowTheLightGetsIn, a “philosophy, music and entertainment festival” on a field between Newport Street and the river Wye, in Cusop just over the English border from Hay-on-Wye, on May 24-27.

It is seeking permission to host music, hot food and drinks until 1am on the Friday, Saturday and Sunday night, to sell alcohol until 12:45 am, and to remain open until 1:30am.

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TVF are seeking permission for this not just this year but every year up to and including 2028.

But there have been nine objections to this from the public, now published anonymously on Herefordshire Council’s website.

One nearby tourism business said agreed noise limits had been regularly breached late at night during last year’s festival, but that “no action had been taken” on either side of the border.

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A five-year licence would give the organisers “carte blanche over what they do each year”, they warned.

A neighbour in his 70s said he had previously feared being robbed by festival-goers who had got into his garden late at night, compounding the “major nuisance” of the noise from the adjacent campsite into the early hours.

A resident of the recent Bookers Edge development off Newport Street said the event is “a cuckoo in the Herefordshire nest” from which the local community “derives no benefit, only nuisance”.

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And another neighbour claimed that “all the goodwill felt toward the event locally has been used up by the broken promises and misinformation that has been supplied by the organisers”.

But there were also two letters supporting the festival, which offers reduced entrance fees to locals. One claimed that only “a small but vocal minority” in Cusop oppose it and are seeking so “detract from the enjoyment of the majority”.

Give the strength of feeling over the festival’s application, it has been passed to the council’s licensing subcommittee to decide this Friday (May 3).

Timed to coincide with the larger and longer Hay Festival, HowTheLightGetsIn was first held in 2010 and returned in 2023 after a two-year hiatus.