THE VILLAGE hosting Truck Festival is preparing for a repeat of the ‘chaos’ that marred last year’s event.

In 2017, the festival, held at Hill Farm in Steventon, near Didcot, saw gridlocked roads and pedestrian queues of up to four hours to get into the site.

This year’s edition marks Truck’s 21st birthday and runs from Friday, July 20 to Sunday, July 22, with Thursday afternoon entry available for the first time.

The 20198 line-up includes George Ezra, Friendly Fires and Courteeners.

Event organisers Global festivals have created a traffic management plan designed to avoid a repeat of last year’s problems, with people directed to enter via Featherbed Lane, not Steventon village.

But Steventon Parish Council Chair Dr Chris Wilding is expecting the worst when more than 10,000 revellers descend on the village in four weeks time.

He said: “We will wait and see what actually transpires as it has been promised before.

“The Truck organisers will have to ensure that they have well briefed stewards appropriately positioned to ensure that traffic flow does not come through the village and directed to the Featherbed Lane entrance.

“This will undoubtedly cause chaos on the surrounding roads.”

From 10am on Thursday July 19 until 4pm on Monday July 23 traffic management measures will be in place on the roads surrounding the festival.

Northbound A34 traffic will be told to exit at the Chilton interchange rather than Milton following congestion at the latter junction last year.

Revellers can access the festival from Featherbed Lane, with marshals controlling a stop/go operation on Rowstock roundabout and Wantage Road on Thursday and Friday.

A Truck Festival spokesperson said: “We are introducing Thursday entry at Truck Festival this year, chiefly to alleviate congestion as festival-goers arrive at the event.

“This strategy has been extremely well-received at planning meetings with the local authorities, including Highways.

“Additional improvements to the traffic management plan include a new route for shuttle buses which avoids Steventon, a new route for all production traffic during the build and break - also avoiding Steventon, the implementation of a one-way systems around The Causeway and St Michael’s Way to keep traffic flowing at peak times, and various additions to the traffic management personnel deployment to ensure junctions and checkpoints are properly managed.

“The event has become extremely popular in the last 5 years, and a degree of disruption inevitable - but a huge amount of effort has gone into improving our plans based on learnings from previous years in order to minimise the impact on the community.”