HOPES that the Swindon Food and Drink Festival could become a regular highlight of the town’s social calendar have been dashed.

Last June’s event at Lydiard Park, which included a demonstration by MasterChef presenter Gregg Wallace, was the first and during the weekend organisers said it would be back in 2016.

But John Rhodes, director of Garden Events Ltd told the Swindon Advertiser this week that the two-day festival had made a loss and the decision had been taken not to run it again.

The company has also decided to call time on Marlborough Food and Drink Festival after two years, for the same reason, although it is continuing with the Cheltenham event that it has run for nine years.

Mr Rhodes explained: “It did make a loss because we were not supported by the public enough.These events are very expensive to put on and we cannot afford to lose so much money on a festival.”

“It was a really hard decision to make because I know that the people who did come to the festival did enjoy the show.”

He did not want to say how much money the festival had lost, but said: “We have looked at it and we came to the conclusion that we cannot afford to run that show again and incur another potential loss.”

“It is a great shame,” he said. “Lydiard Park is beautiful and it would be great to have something like that in Swindon.”

Hadi Brooks, owner of Ray’s Ice Cream in Old Town, which was one of the exhibitors, said: “We were very disappointed when they told us.

“It was a great event. It went really well and we had a really busy time, particularly on the Saturday.”

“But I kind of understand why, if they cannot find a way of at least breaking even.”

She added: “I think it’s a real shame.”

Last summer’s festival attracted more than 5,000 people and 100 or more local food and drink producers and at the time organisers said they wanted to dispel any notion that Swindon wasn’t suited to such an event.