Edinburgh councillors approve Terminal V dance festival's Easter event despite noise and drug use concerns

Councillors at the city’s Licensing Sub-Committee meeting on Tuesday unanimously approved the application by the festival, which is held annually at the Royal Highland Centre in Ingliston.

Arrests and drug use have historically occurred at the event, with a Police Scotland representative saying 21 arrests took place at the festival’s two events last year, 18 of which were for possession of drugs with intent to distribute.

A further 271 drug seizures took place at the events, alongside 445 medical incidents, three of which required hospitalisation.

In 2022, a young woman passed away at the festival’s other annual date, on Halloween. A 19-year-old woman, Maya Nagar, collapsed around 6pm at the festival on October 29, dying in the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh two days later.

20,000 music lovers descended on The Royal Highland Centre on October 25 and 26 last year to see some of the biggest names in electronic music perform across two indoor stages for the Terminal V Halloween Edition in Edinburgh. | Michael Hunter

The Police Scotland representative said: “Despite previous events being subject to extensive multi-agency planning mitigations, there still continues to be a significant level of drug issues, particularly with possession and supply offences.

“Information collected from previous Terminal V events held in this venue evidence the high risk and levels of drug misuse and all crimes, and a number of persons attending have required urgent medical attention, which have often resulted in hospitalisation.

“This event also generates the highest volume of criminal cases, many of which require subsequent drug analysis and reporting of the circumstances to the Procurator Fiscal Service.”

A representative for the festival at the committee meeting said one of the hospitalisations was due to intoxication, another due to diabetes, and the remaining one due to an allergic reaction.

Terminal V is one of the biggest electronic music festivals in the country.

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The organiser also said that the scale of the event had been reduced from 15,000 tickets to 12,000, pointing to new music festivals and other events that appeal to a Scottish audience. Furthermore, he said that in response to noise complaints, the design of part of the festival had been changed.

The representative said: “There were complaints from seven, eight kilometres away because of the way the wind direction had gone, people who were outwith our normal notification process.

“The noise complaints, we’re assured, [were caused by] the external staging area, which has been decreased in size, decreased in scope, and also has been repositioned to take that into account as well.

“So, fingers crossed, there’s been a multitude of different things put in place to address those unusual complaints that go back to last April, which hopefully won’t need any recurrence.”