Person arrested at Glastonbury Festival 2022 as police report large fall in crime

One person has been arrested at Glastonbury Festival as police record a large drop in reported crime at the festival.

Officers have recorded approximately 85% less crime so far this year compared to the last festival in 2019.

A spokesman for Avon and Somerset Police said this may be because the event has gone largely cashless and attendees are paying using their phones.

Superintendent Oliver Cosgrove, silver commander for Glastonbury, told the PA news agency: “The police operation here is to support Glastonbury Festival to provide a safe environment for people to come.

“It is a very safe festival generally and although we have seen a huge drop in crime numbers this year, that is not from a huge place previously.

As of 11am on Friday (24 June), 11 offences had been recorded since the gates of Glastonbury opened early on Wednesday morning, ending a three-year hiatus for the Somerset festival.

Those offences included four incidents of theft, four drug-related offences, one incident of common assault, one incident of criminal damage and one incident of public disorder.

One of the drug-related offences resulted in an arrest.

Superintendent Cosgrove continued: “Certainly at the festival a long time ago, people would store huge amounts of money in their tents because they didn’t want to carry it around with them for fear of losing it, so then thieves would find the opportunity while people were watching the big acts on the main stage to go around the tents and just cut them open and steal the money.

“These days it is a more cashless society a vast majority of venues here can take cards.

“It is not quite a cashless festival yet and I don’t think it will ever be, but certainly the drive is towards that.

“So people carry their phones with them, we hand out phone pouches to the public and they are very popular, which allows people to keep their phone in them and reduces the opportunity for those phones to be stolen.”

Billie Eilish will make history when she takes to the Pyramid Stage on Friday night as Glastonbury’s youngest ever solo headliner, while Sir Paul McCartney will headline Saturday night a week after his 80th birthday, becoming the festival’s oldest ever solo headliner.