This year’s Reading Festival will be the bigger and louder  as organisers got the go-ahead to add more tickets and crank up the volume.

Organiser Festival Republic was given the green light to add 10,000 extra tickets over the next three years – 3,500 this year and next year and a further 3,000 in 2011.

For the first time Reading residents will have first dibs on the extra 3,500 tickets for this year.

Locals get first dibs on extra Reading Festival tickets

Festival Republic boss Melvin Benn said he took the decision to add more tickets partly after more than 2,000 people joined the Facebook group ‘We think that people with RG postcodes should get priority tickets!!’

An extension on the number of Early Bird arrivals means 20,000 can get in early – up from 7,500.

And the volume will be turned up to 70 decibels for the headline acts on the three nights.

Mr Benn told the licensing committee on Friday: “If 3,500 is insufficient I will meet the demand fully by offering Reading residents to pre-register each year. They will then have the opportunity to buy tickets without being part of the general scramble.”

The Early Bird extension means as many revellers currently turn up to the site in Richfield Avenue on Thursday, they will now be admitted from 6pm on Wednesday.

At the meeting, Helen Lambert from Caversham and District Residents’ Association said: “We are not anti-festival but we are concerned to get a fair and reasonable balance between festival-goers’ enjoyment and local people going about their normal occupation.”

Mr Benn added: “It came to a head last year when a phenomenal amount of people turned up early. [An extension of] 20,000 allows us the headroom we would need over the next five years. It isn’t an extension of the event.”

Festival Republic was also allowed to increase the volume of the entire event, and turn it up even louder for the last two acts of the night.

Sound levels for last year’s event were recorded at 65 decibels but Mr Benn said many revellers complained it was too quiet in the main arena and was worried it could spell the end of the festival if acts refused to play.

The committee granted an increase to 68db throughout the entire event, apart from the headline act and the act before it, which will play at 70db.

To help with sound and space the Radio 1/NME stage will also be rotated between 45 and 60 degrees in an easterly direction as it currently faces out to Mapledurham.

The extra tickets are open to all residents with RG1 postcodes and Reading Borough Council residents in postcode areas RG2, RG4, RG6, RG30 and RG31.

Register by Friday sending your name, address and how you will be travelling to the festival to reading@festivalrepublic.com and those eligible will be emailed a link from Monday.

Tickets will be posted out and festival-goers must take ID and a utility bill to prove their address where their ticket will be exchanged for a wristband.

No tickets will be for sale at the festival and there will be no onsite box office.

For next year’s festival, Reading residents can register from September 1 this year until January 31 next year.

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