The giant New Year's Eve party planned for a farm in Navestock Side has been cancelled due to poor ticket sales - leaving the organisers up to £50,000 out of pocket.

Matthew Wordley and Richard Hoyle say they had no choice but to call off the event, A Country Affair, after only taking around 800 bookings for the 2,000 capacity party.

"We are very unhappy," said Mr Hoyle.

"We are out of pocket by somewhere in the region of £14,000 in real cash, but we've spent a year really working on this, and in terms of time we both could have spent working on other things the real figure is around £50,000.

"As far as we are concerned this was a public event for the people of Essex. In a 20 mile radius of here there are 1.4 million people, and anyone could have come."

The pair defended their decision to charge nearly £160 a ticket for the all-inclusive night, saying they felt it was a reasonable price, with any profits going to charity.

But Mr Wordley slammed the "Millennium mercenaries" who, he says, have deterred people from going out on the night by hiking up prices.

"We are just so disappointed," he said.

"Throughout the whole process everything has been done properly, all the licenses have been obtained, all the products and staff were in place to make the evening happen, and in the end it is just a question of apathy from the general public and people feeling they are being ripped off. "

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