Keighley Beer Festival, which was due to be held at the end of this month, has been axed.

The organisers, the Keighley and Craven Branch of the Campaign for Real Ale, have been unable to find a suitable venue.

Members have been searching for a new location since the closure of Worth Brewery, in Keighley, earlier this year, where the festival had been held for six out of the past eight years.

Branch chairman and festival organiser, Richard Candeland said "It's very unfortunate. I've had a number of people come up to me in the street and say what's happened to the festival.

"But it has been difficult to find somewhere that fits the bill. We had an offer to use an industrial unit in the Keighley area, but we feared it was not big enough and it was touch and go whether we would break even."

The fire service ruled that it could only accommodate 200 people, but previous festivals had catered for about 300 a session.

Victoria Hall, in Keighley, was not considered because of the expense -- the festival needed to occupy a building for four days to prepare the real ale, said Mr Candeland.

It was held there in 1997 and 1998 and the festival had lost money in 1998.

But he stressed that the festival had only been postponed this year and that organisers were going back again to look at the industrial unit in the hope that the numbers could be increased.

"We don't want to disclose at this time where the unit is. But it is in the wider Keighley area," he said.

The plan was to cancel this year and aim to organise another in September next year, the traditional time for the Keighley festival.

"We are in the process of gathering further information to put to the fire officer, while at the same time reviewing the way we run the festival to see if we can cut costs," he added.

This year would have been the 13th Keighley Beer Festival. The first festivals were held in Keighley Drill Hall, in Lawkholme Lane, in the late 1980s, but after an IRA attack on another drill hall in the country, the Ministry of Defence barred them for public use.

From 1992 to 1995 they were held at Worth Brewery, in 1996 and 1997 in Victoria Hall and then back to Worth Brewery since 1998.