Despite Malmesbury’s Party in the Park music festival receiving high praise from performers, organisers are disappointed with the poor turnout.

The two day music festival at St Aldhelm’s Mead, followed by a family fun day on Bank Holiday Monday, had capacity for 3,000 people.

But only 350 people paid to see headliners Sandi Thom, Jon Allen and The Goodness perform on Saturday with numbers failing to meet targets for the other two days.

Organisers had hoped that up to 3,000 people would pay up to £32.50 for the Saturday performance and this would have made a profit of around £40,000.

The costs of the festival included a fee of £11,500 to pay for the police to be on site for the three-day event.

But when officers realised how low the turnout was most were sent home and so organisers now hope the bill will also be reduced.

Communications manager Paul Travers was disappointed with the turnout.

He said: “It is a great shame. I don’t have exact numbers but I was there on Saturday and there was probably about 350 people there, about 10 per cent of capacity.

“The event was fantastic, the organisers have done an absolute miracle to put it together in just seven weeks.

“Jon Allen sent me a text afterwards to say how well he had been looked after.

“And the guys from Bath Ales were there and they said it was one of the best organised festivals they had been to.

“It is just a huge shame more people didn’t get a chance to enjoy it.

“They don’t know what they missed.”

It was the first time the Malmesbury Carnival had put on a music festival of this scale and organisers had hoped to build on the success of a smaller outdoor music event last year.

With income from Party in the Park still to be counted coordinator Chris Davey said profit or loss totals wouldn’t be calculated until mid September.

He said: “We’re still scratching our heads as to why more local people from the town didn’t attend.

“We put this on as a result of a popular event last year which was very well received.

“Right now we are still mopping our brows but soon we will sit down and I’m sure we’ll have discussions about next year.”

Volunteers are expected to finish the clear up of the event by the end of the week.

With any loss made by Party in the Park being absorbed by the carnival there may be less funding to go round to community groups than previous years.

Councillor Bill Blake praised the hard work of the committee but was disappointed to think local organisations may miss out on carnival funding.

He said: “Despite the best intentions and plenty of enthusiasm sometimes people can overreach themselves.

“It does appear to have been a bit too ambitious, but it is not always easy to make money.”

He added: “People can only go to so many events and maybe we need to scale back what we do.”