THE inaugural Live at Lydiard festival is all set to go ahead – 12 months later than planned.

Sean Kingston, Roman Kemp and Artful Dodger are all booked to appear at the park's one-day music event on August 21 – with the first headliner to be announced this week.

All three acts had been scheduled to appear in 2020 before the festival fell victim to the pandemic.

Organisers hope plans to remove distancing rules in June as part of Boris Johnson's lockdown roadmap will mean 10,000 people can attend.

The man behind the festival, Jack Summers, said: “We’re pushing ahead with our plans for this year.

“I’m pretty elated, to be honest. We were so pleased with the feedback we had when we first announced Live at Lydiard 2020, it was just a huge letdown for us to have to postpone it. 

“We had a great uptake on tickets before we announced everyone and that continued to grow when we started to announce acts, here was a clear demand for it. To finally get it out there is amazing.”

If the lockdown roadmap goes as planned, all restrictions could be removed on June 21, including bans on large gatherings.

But if some restrictions remain, Jack said he is prepared to adapt the festival.

Jack added: “It’ll be at its full planned capacity, which is 10,000 people. The event is happening on August 21 so we have a two-month buffer if there’s any issues with the government's rollout or anything else that throws us, we have this comfortable two-month buffer.

“We’re very confident it’s going to happen this year, that’s what we’re planning for but we are working on different kinds of models for how the festival would look at different capacity marks.”

Despite already announcing a handful of acts for the event, Jack was keen to stress there are still surprises to come.

“The line-up is tied over and we’re announcing our first headliner this Friday,” Jack said. 

“There are still around 32 acts to announce including our two headliners, we’re very excited."

To book tickets visit liveatlydiard.co.uk