THIS year’s Emergency Services Show in Wiltshire will not be going ahead.

Since its inception in 2005, the show has been held at Hullavington airfield, between Malmesbury and Chippenham, through a license agreement with the Ministry of Defence (MoD).

In January, the MoD announced that the airfield was to be put up for sale with immediate effect as part of a wide ranging disposal of land.

Since that time, the trustees and the show's supporters – in particular, the North Wiltshire MP James Gray – have endeavoured to either secure agreement to use Hullavington one last time, or move to a new location.

Despite what have been described as “encouraging conversations”, organisers of the show have not been about to secure assurances that the site will be available to them in September.

Therefore they have said they are not prepared to risk spending money show planning the show while there is a risk that they would still have to cancel.

A spokesperson for the show said: “It is with real regret that we have taken the difficult decision not to hold an Emergency Services Show in 2016.

“Although we are obviously very disappointed not to be holding a Show this year, the extra time does now allow us to focus on finding an appropriate new location for September 2017, and we hope to be able to make an announcement about this very soon.

"In the coming weeks, we will also be able to decide on the charitable beneficiaries from our 2015 Show, and a cheque presentation will be held in due course.

"We would like to express our sincere thanks to the staff at Buckley Barracks who have supported the ten shows held at Hullavington, and we can assure all of our volunteers, supporters and visitors that we will be back, better than ever, in 2017.

"We are also updating our website emergencyservicesshow.com – in the meantime, updates will be posted on our Facebook page facebook.com/EmergencyServicesShow or via Twitter @999Show."