Maryport Town Council is looking to take legal action to recover the £8,000 granted to the Blues committee for a festival that never went ahead.

The council held talks behind closed doors on Monday to “receive and update a report on attempts made to recover grant payments made in respect of the cancelled Maryport Blues Festival 2018 and to consider potential future action.”

In a statement, council chairman Peter Kendall said: “The council is considering taking legal action against Maryport Festivals Group as a result of its failure to refund the monies granted to the group towards the running of the 2018 Maryport Blues Festival, which was cancelled shortly before it was due to take place.”

However, it appears they may be out of luck as a former blues committee member said this week that the money was gone.

Blues directors would not speak to a reporter because they said this was an ongoing situation.

However, one former committee member was willing to speak without being identified, and said the money had been spent trying to get the festival off the ground: “Deposits had to be paid for acts and those were non-refundable.

“The committee and directors worked very hard to retain the festival and that included spending the money it had.

"In the end it was too little too late and directors had no choice but to cancel.”

The person said they understood directors had offered the council free use of their assets – an inflatable marquee, mobile bar, safety barriers and the like – for any festival they run and in return for the funding lost.

At a recent meeting the council’s budget committee recommended setting aside £15,000 for a festival of its own.

It has been suggested that this could be a festival based on Maryport’s seaside location.

Finance chairman Carol Tindall said she would like to see a food festival based on locally caught seafood.

Local businesses would be invited to take part and there would be music including sea shanties and traditional music at one end of the harbour and more modern fare at the other end.

Festivals have been identified in the Maryport Development Plan as being a desirable way of involving the local community first and, once established, bringing visitors to the town.