A MUSIC festival which returned to Malvern after a seven-year hiatus has been hailed a "huge success" by the organiser.

Malvern Rocks returned to the town of Malvern between Friday, July 28 and Sunday, July 30, at a variety of venues.

The Red Lion on St Ann's Road, Bar Limon, Belle Vue Island, Malvern Lounge, The Morgan, The New Inn, Newtown Club and The Red Lion at Stifford's Bridge all hosted a variety of musical acts.

The last Malvern Rocks festival was in 2016, and since then a variety of factors such as the pandemic and rising costs prevented the festival from returning.

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Ralph Tittley, festival director, brought the festival back to Malvern alongside Jem Vipond (musical director), Andy Tucker (logistics) and Lisa Bircham (venue liaison).

Mr Tittley praised the return of the Malvern Rocks event and those who made its return possible.

He said: "I have honestly never seen some of the venues so busy at the festival.

"It was a fantastic return after not running the festival for so long and it would not have been so successful without the amazing acts, the venue hosts and the people who turned up to support

"It went better than we could have possibly hoped for and we cannot wait to return next year."

The event formerly raised money for Acorns Children's Hospice and St Richard's Hospice but decided to switch focus for its return.

Mr Tittley said: "Originally we were a charity-focused event but we did shift this year to becoming a bit more commercially focused so that we could pay a small fee to all of the acts that performed this year.

"As so much has changed since 2016 and a lot of the venues had new ownership, we had to convince everyone that this would be a good idea which was not easy, but the trust these venues showed us hopefully paid off.

"It is hard to know just how many people attended the event as it was so dispersed, but we were really happy with the turnout."

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Mr Tittley also said that the organisers were happy to promote so many local performers at the event.

He said: "There were about 70 performers in total at the event, which was down from previous years but really manageable for the return of the festival.

"Around 49 of the performers at the event were either directly local or were local to the West Midlands and nearby counties."

Malvern Rocks was part-funded by the UK Government through the UK Shared Prosperity Fund and Malvern Hills District Council.