2025 Green Festival Statements - Nottingham Green Festival

Nottingham Green Festival Statements Regarding Insurance Issues at 2025 Event

19th February 2026

Email sent to Green Festival Participants

Firstly we must apologise for not having kept you as much informed as we would have liked. As you know we are a small team of volunteers. We have spent the last few months working through the stressful issues of last year’s insurance cancellation.

The situation is complex, but we have reached a resolution.

Briefly, Event Insurance Services Ltd, have acknowledged that errors were made in their communications with their underwriters, due to ‘changes in the political climate over the two years’. This was in part compounded by the late completion of some stall applications. They have compensated the Green Festival for some of the direct losses. Whilst we need to ensure the financial future of the event, we have allocated what we can to give a small token of support to those that were cancelled from the event. We would like to do more and are happy to discuss whether we can help others in other ways.

Event Services have been very supportive since at least 2014 (before our time), and remains so. We can negotiate the best level of cover to ensure that the event continues. However, clearly, we should also look for alternative insurance provision elsewhere. Please contact us (remind us) if you are able to help with this.

Again, we acknowledge that all of this is far from ideal, but we suggest that we have to draw a line and look.toward the future of the Green Festival, this year and beyond. We are committed to rebuilding the spirit of community, solidarity and diversity that we have all come to love.

We are therefore pleased to advise that your invitation to apply for a stall at Nottingham Green Festival : Sunday 13th September 2026 will be with you early next month. The key lesson that we have learned is that we really have to receive and complete bookings by the set deadlines, so that any issues can be resolved in good time.

Thank you for your support and understanding.

Nottingham Green Festival Cooperative Planning Group

Thursday 18th September 2025

Dear Friends,

Thank you for your support and commitment to Nottingham Green Festival and for your understanding of the very difficult situation at the weekend. We were very sad to see our Festival impacted by the actions of our insurers.

The volunteers in the organising group are grateful that the community has allowed us the time to do the work necessary to be able to share these further details of the situation. We are making every effort to address the questions and concerns of the Green Festival Community, with a hope and intention to have comprehensive answers in time for a meeting with the groups and others affected. This includes maintaining a critical dialogue with the insurers. Please allow us time and space for this dialogue to continue.

Updated summary for clarification

At the 11th hour the insurers changed their interpretation of a clause referring to “protests, or religious and/or politically motivated activities”.

Furthermore, the insurance company threatened that all insurance for the event would be void if any stallholders falling under this (undefined) category were allowed to remain at the event.

We have worked with these insurers for decades. We have previously had no problems in giving as much time as possible to those small groups that do not have their own insurance, to arrange one day cover through us.

However this means submitting the relevant paperwork close to the day of the event, and this ultimately is why we did not have time to find an alternative provider after our insurers’ sudden shift in policy, which we were not previously informed of. Please accept our sincere apologies for our failure to anticipate this issue.

We appreciate that many groups put in so much work, discussion and expense in preparing special displays and activities to highlight their role in tackling the overwhelming crises that we face.

As you know, we proceeded with a smaller ‘Green Fair’ due to the time and money that had already been invested by the other stall holders. But we feel strongly that the exclusion of the other stalls was an injustice. We wish to fight this new policy and send a message to all insurance brokers that this type of discriminatory policy will not be accepted.

What’s Next?

We now want to organise the fight back against this corporate censorship. On 25h September we hosted a meeting with stall holders excluded from our 2025 event. We will be making a further statement following that consultation

We are particularly interested in feedback from stallholders who were negatively impacted, whether you were turned away from the event entirely, or you believe your stall received less attention due to the last minute changes to the event.

Thank you,

Nottingham Green Festival Voluntary Organisers

Follow and support us on social media

Nb We hope to post further updates here and will send participating groups emails with bigger announcements, but the day-to-day discussion by the wider community seems mainly to be happening on Facebook. You could also follow nottmgreenfest on Instagram and on Bluesky at https://nottmgreenfest.bsky.social