Southwold Arts Festival has announced because of the ongoing Covid restrictions and the uncertainty surrounding when audiences can return to theatres that this year’s festival is to be postponed for the second year running.

The annual seaside festival was to have taken place at the end of June centred around the Southwold Arts Centre at St Edmunds Hall, mixing theatre, music, books and talks.

The line-up was to have included performances by jazz singer Clare Teal and The Blues Band.

Festival director Lin Le Versha said: “It is with regret that the planning group has decided that the 2021 Arts Festival will not take place in June 2021 as originally planned.

“Our volunteer committee, responsible for planning and staging the Arts Festival since 2014, have reached the conclusion that with the uncertainty over the coming months and the timing of the Festival within days of the planned lifting of all restrictions on June 21, that the festival should be cancelled.

“This has been an extremely difficult decision to take but we cannot afford to run our programme with socially distanced rules, and we cannot guarantee that these will be completely lifted in June.”

It is hoped that some events will be run during the autumn and winter and the Festival will return from June 25 to July 3, 2022.