CHANGES to the historic Peebles Beltane Festival will be introduced next year to ensure the safety of children at the crowning ceremony.

The number of children attending the three local primary schools has grown considerably over the years, and organisers of the festival have taken action as they fear it will result in having an “unsafe” number of children packed onto the steps of the Old Parish Church.

Over the past few years, primary one children dressed as mice have been taken off the steps, as well as half the primary six children who are seated to watch the ceremony.

However, this has not resolved the problem, and committee members have decided that primary three children will no longer be on the steps during the ceremony.

But rather than scrap these characters from Red Letter Day altogether, they will now be supervised in the church hall during the crowning of the Beltane Queen.

Chairman Keith Brunton said: “This solution allows them to march to the church and then still take part in the Lorry Procession afterwards. It was felt a better solution than just to remove them completely from the day.

“With the removal of the primary three children from the steps along with our previous actions, this will take the number of children on the church steps back to what it was 25 years ago.”

And this isn’t the only change afoot for the Beltane.

The traditional Thursday night concert will no longer take place during the festal week, and the Queen’s Standard Ceremony will now be included at the Cross Kirk Service on the Sunday evening.

The Novice Ride-Out led by the Cornet and Lass on the Thursday evening is becoming increasingly popular, and the Beltane Committee felt it would be best to move the concert to a date in September/October 2020.

Mr Brunton explained: “While the concert itself is normally well attended, it has proven to be an increasingly difficult event to put on. Moving it away from Beltane Week to later in the year will allow the organisers to be able to concentrate solely on the concert, rather than the many other events which take place during Beltane Week.”