One of Tenby’s best-loved summer traditions has been cancelled, with the volunteers who run it blaming a nine-month wait for a council decision on crowd safety.
The Tenby Summer Spectacular, due to take place on 16 and 30 August, has been called off “until further notice,” its organisers announced.
The events, run by Tenby Round Table, have been a fixture of the town’s summer for decades and raise money for local charities, sports teams and community groups.
The organisers said the cancellation was “a decision that has been forced upon us.”
At the heart of the row is a single question about how crowds are safely managed at the harbour event.
To run the events lawfully, the Round Table says it needs Pembrokeshire County Council to use statutory powers to temporarily restrict pedestrian access to the event area once it reaches capacity.
It describes this as a standard tool used by councils across the country for public events of this kind.
The group says it first raised the issue with the council in September 2025, raised it again formally in writing in May, and has chased it repeatedly since.
The volunteers say they have commissioned health and safety consultants, produced event management plans and attended every meeting asked of them.
“We have done everything a responsible event organiser can do,” they said.
The Round Table says the written responses it finally received, only in the past two weeks, contain what it believes to be “factual inaccuracies and misleading statements” about the law governing the power.
It also claims the council has acknowledged that the legal advice it is relying on is “provisional and still under internal review.”
The organisers say they cannot commit to running events for thousands of people based on a legal position they say the council’s own officers have admitted is not settled.
The group warned that the cancellation would be “a devastating blow” to the charities its funds support, saying hundreds of thousands of pounds have gone to good causes since the events began.
The cancellation is provisional, with the Round Table setting the council a deadline of 25 June to provide what it called “a clear, accurate, and legally grounded answer.”
The council, however, firmly rejected any suggestion it had forced the event off.
Deputy leader Cllr Paul Miller said the authority had supported the Spectacular for nearly 15 years and had “not requested or given direction that the event should be cancelled.”
He said the harbour was a working harbour and a key community asset, and that the council had a duty to ensure the event could take place safely.
That included addressing concerns formally raised by the responsible authorities under licensing law, which include the emergency services, he said.
“Once the organisers provide the required information, the licensing sub committee will consider the event application, in exactly the same way they consider the large number of other events which occur across Pembrokeshire each year,” he said.
The committee is currently scheduled to meet in July.
Local member Cllr Sam Skyrme-Blackhall said she wanted to see the events go ahead, and was “really encouraged” from meetings with senior officers that everyone was ready to help make them happen.
In response to the council’s statement, the Round Table said it welcomed Cllr Miller’s words but stood by its account of events.
The group said the one outstanding question — how pedestrian access would be lawfully managed — was the single element holding up its event management plan, and that only the council could answer it.
It said its most recent email on the issue, sent on Monday, had not yet been acknowledged, and urged councillors to press officers to respond by the deadline.
A council licensing committee is due to meet in July to decide whether the event’s licence is renewed, amended or withdrawn.
