Organiser Stephen Harewood had applied for a reduction in the licence fee and was stunned when it was doubled to £150.
The committee met on Thursday to discuss the appeal and decided that £75 would be reasonable, although they could not give any further discount.
‘It was the lowest we could go without being unfair to others,’ said committee president Deputy Gerald Voisin.
‘The non-resident trader’s licence, according to the Hawkers and Non-resident Traders law, costs £2,000 per exhibition.
So when it was originally discussed, it was thought that the committee were doing a favour by charging £150 per trader.
What the committee didn’t realise was that they had only paid £75 last year,’ he said.
He also said that while there was a fixed exhibition fee, they were willing to consider individual cases.
‘The fee was established many years ago but we do try and help out by reducing the fee based on evidence we get.
These things wouldn’t be able to happen if we charged everyone £2,000.
We want to make things available for the public and we would deny them the choice if we stuck a £2,000 fee on it,’ he said.
Mr Harewood had hoped the committee would reduce the fee so that he could bring over more traders.
‘It is a reasonable decision, but we were trying to expand the festival and that makes it hard,’ he said.
