Storm Lilian: high winds disrupt flights and Leeds and Creamfields festivals

Flights have been grounded and Leeds festival has been forced to shut down some of its stages amid severe weather warnings over Storm Lilian.

High winds led to disruption across the north of England, with yellow warnings for wind in place on Friday morning and expectations of gusts of up to 80mph.

More than a dozen flights from Heathrow and Leeds Bradford have been cancelled, while flights coming into the latter, which is the UK’s highest airport, have been diverted to Liverpool.

Leeds festival’s organiser, Festival Republic, said on X that it would be unable to open the main arena on time and would not be opening the BBC Radio 1 or Aux stages at all on Friday.

The company wrote that it had “definitely lost the BBC Radio 1 stage today, and there will be no performances on it. We have also lost the Aux stage today and there will be no performances on it. We remain hopeful that everything else will continue as planned and that we will still have an amazing weekend. Please await further information.”

The start of Creamfields festival in Cheshire, at which Calvin Harris, Fatboy Slim and Chase & Status are among the acts scheduled to play over the weekend, was also delayed due to the strong winds.

“We are experiencing high gusts of wind on site, for safety we urge campers to stay in their tents, we expect the winds to pass by mid-morning,” the organisers said.

In a later statement, they said: “Due to the high wind conditions on site, there will be a delay to public arenas and gates opening.” They added: “The high winds are currently only forecast to last for the morning.”

In Greater Manchester, Bolton food festival, which is expected to attract about 500,000 visitors over the bank holiday weekend and has appearances by celebrity chefs including Ainsley Harriott and James Martin, was delayed in starting due to the inclement weather. Pictures posted online showed stalls blown over and damaged by the wind.

Bolton council said it had asked staff based in the town centre to work from home, and said the town hall was closed until further notice.

Hundreds of homes across the north and Midlands have been left without power after high winds caused outages on the network.

SP Energy Networks reported power cuts in Cheshire, including in Chester, Knutsford and Warrington, while 300 homes in Durham and 80 in Yorkshire were left without power overnight.

In north Staffordshire, more than 1,300 households were affected by outages. The National Grid said other areas of the country could be affected by disruptions to power.

The winds are expected to die down on Friday afternoon, but heading into Saturday a yellow weather warning for rain is in place across much of south-east England.

The warning stretches from the Isle of Wight up to Ipswich in Suffolk and includes London. The Met Office advised people to expect “spells of rain, heavy at times, likely to cause some travel disruption and perhaps flooding in a few places”.