Belladrum organiser vows full debrief as to what caused traffic chaos for locals and festival goers

Belladrum Tartan Heart Festival's event producer, has vowed that he will have full debrief as to why attendees and locals spent hours stuck in traffic yesterday.

Dougie Brown, said that causing delays to locals and those attending the three-day festival was the "the last thing he wanted to do". He said that the increased number of cars coming to the festival, could have had an impact into the queues, which saw people waiting up to six hours.

Speaking to The Inverness Courier, Mr Brown said: "We are still going to do a full debrief on what happened.

"There were a few factors going on. People arrived exceptionally early, which meant staff couldn't arrive on site. Unfortunately people weren't agreeing to move so it took a while to get staff in to then get the site fully operational.

"Weather didn't help either, and it was quite wet."

Speaking about the impact the traffic had on locals, he said: "That's the last thing we want to do. We don't put the festival on to then cause gridlock out the roads.

"We've been very fortunate the last few years and it has run a lot smoother. It's just one of these unfortunate things that has happened. We are going to fully look into it with the police and Traffic Scotland to make sure it will never happen again."

The event organiser assured people travelling to the festival over the next few days that the traffic would be smooth sailing.

However, he did say to expect delays to traffic when leaving the festival on Sunday.

He said: "We have had more cars. We are going to look at how we will encourage car sharing in the future and everything else we can do to stop this happening again."

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