Big V Festival clear-up begins at Weston Park

More than 600 volunteer litter pickers from across the country have descended on Weston Park in the wake of the V Festival.

Volunteers moved onto the 700-acre site at Weston-under-Lizard, near Shifnal, yesterday to start clearing discarded tents and camping equipment left behind by some of the 90,000 revellers.

The tents and other items abandoned by festival-goers are being collected by Rotary clubs.

They will be transported across the globe to provide humanitarian aid in crisis-hit areas.

Other items being collected by charities and contractors include sleeping bags and deckchairs.

Rotarian Alison Braid, from the Rotary Club of Telford Centre, said more than a dozen of its members headed to Weston Park yesterday for the clean-up.

"We saw some weird and wonderful things, like an inflatable electric guitar, pink butterflies, a toy mobile phone," she said.

"Overall we were collecting large tents, sleeping bags, camping chairs and wellington boots.

"We were just one of a number of teams to help."

The idea to collect tents and equipment from the festival, which was held on Saturday and Sunday, began in 2005 when a young festival-goer questioned if the equipment left by revellers could be put to good use.

Rotarians from Brewood and District Rotary Club got to work and by the following year they were on site collecting the items and sending them to the International Aid Trust, based in Preston, for use anywhere in the world.

Keith Gater, from Brewood and District Rotary Club, said: "We are very happy because we have doubled what we got last year. We are still there today collecting items."

Sergeant Calum Forsyth, from Staffordshire Police, said officers had arrested 85 people at this year's festival.

These included 25 people for thefts from tents, more than 20 people for possession of drugs and the remainder for minor assaults and public order offences. On-site medical staff treated more than 1,600 people.