"With a heavy heart and a lot of disappointment," an annual tribute festival has been cancelled for a second year due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The 2021 Henlow Family Tribute Festival, which had been due to take place at Henlow Bridge Lakes at the beginning of July and had a line-up including The Jam tribute act A Band Called Malice and Madness tribute act Los Palmas 6, has been cancelled.

The decision to cancel this year's event was taken "with a heavy heart and a lot of disappointment," Chris Rushton, managing director of Henlow Bridge Lakes said.

He said: "Although smaller than lots of festivals, the pre-event build-up, together with the behind the scenes investment, usually starts around 14 weeks ahead of the festival running date.

"This is a substantial commitment for a small business such as ours, and with the current uncertainty and potential delays to the easing of remaining lockdown restrictions, we are left with no other option than to postpone the festival now to let all of our customers know and mitigate any further financial losses.

"We have already completed much of our logistics, planning, layout and numerous safety protocol scenarios and had worked on a plan to enable us to condense the 14-week build-up period to a timeframe of just five weeks. This setup time would have been achievable with lots of hard work from our excellent staff and volunteers, but we cannot afford to wait and see what the relaxation of rules will be, when they are announced on June 14.

"Unfortunately, this just doesn't give us enough time to get the event ready, even if the relaxation of the rules would allow us to run it.

"We can only apologise, but we are looking forward to welcoming you all to a bigger and better 2022 festival."

Next year's event is due to take place from June 30 to July 3.

Those with tickets to the 2021 festival can either secure their space for the 2022 festival, request a refund, or put the money already paid towards any future booking at Henlow Bridge Lakes.

Chris said: "The summer weather is looking good and we are all looking forward to welcoming customers to our site."