There are fears from Kent Police that a festival would "cause chaos" if it is allowed to go ahead.

But the people behind plans for a four-day festival on the Great Lines Heritage Park in Gillingham say the force is "objecting for objection's sake".

The Great Lines Great Music Weekend is planned for the last bank holiday weekend in May.

The festival includes a classical musical event (Friday), dance day (Saturday), music from the 80s, 90s, and 00s (Sunday), and a community family day (Monday).

The Saturday event would have space for 25,000 people. None of the events would include camping.

Hours before councillors were due to discuss the plans on Friday (January 20), the organisers, Stardust Festivals Ltd, announced Welsh opera singer Katherine Jenkins will be headlining the Friday event.

During the meeting, the organisers said 11,000 tickets will be given away for free for people working at Medway Maritime Hospital, the MOD site in Brompton, residents, and council staff, across the four days.

The plans include five bars, a food court and fairground rides including a carousel and ferris wheel.

It was also confirmed people would not be able to bring their own drinks into the events, as has happened previously at Rochester's Castle Concerts.

Ahead of the meeting on Friday, the police gave representations to the council saying it expected the events to cause a "significant amount of crime, disorder, anti-social behaviour, and nuisance within the immediate area"

The force pointed out how the organisers ran an event called Dream Valley at Lydd Airport near Ashford last year, during which there had been issues with drug taking.

Officers advised councillors if they were minded to approve the plans, they would prefer if the event could be held for one day only.

At the beginning of Friday's meeting, further submissions from the police detailing what officers working at the event at Lydd saw were handed to councillors and the Local Democracy Reporting Service.

However, Startdust's legal representative Philip Kolvin KC successfully argued councillors shouldn't take the additional information into account because the statements were submitted only 24 hours before the hearing, and because the information concerned a past event which hadn't needed a licence review.

He said the organisers believed the police's objections were "misconceived", as no residents, businesses, or ward councillors joined them in raising concerns.

However, the organisers said it would be essential to work "in concert" with officers should the events go ahead.

Mr Kolvin also told councillors 20 local bands would be allowed to perform at the festival.

Stuart Jessops, a barrister representing the police, pointed out how there is due to be no trains running the weekend of the event between Gravesend and Gillingham due to scheduled engineering works.

The organiser's travel manager Ben Jones explained how bus tickets from North Greenwich station would be made available, and the event would be running a number of park-and-ride sites locally, but the location of these had yet to be decided.

Mr Jessops said he felt the Stardust's plans lacked detail on issues regarding how many people they expected to arrive and by what means they would travel to and from the town.

He added the Saturday event was the "real problem" because of how many people could attend.

He also said he expected people would turn up and leave the event intoxicated.

"It's a recipe for disaster..."

He said the issue of transport planning "could well lead to disaster if you've got too many people dropping their cars off and not knowing where they're going."

He added: "It's a recipe for disaster. At this stage, we say it's premature. Not enough early work had been done and it could be - very likely to be in terms of transport - chaotic."

Stardust's director Reece Miller - who runs the company with his sister - said he has run over 4,000 events over 30 years.

When asked why his company had chosen Gillingham for his festival, he said the company's chairman had recently purchased Gillingham Marina.

He added: "We sat down with the council and the leadership team at the start of the process before investing heavily in this project and they were arms wide open for business such as this."

Councillors took their decision behind closed doors and the result has yet to be published.