West Bromwich firework display: Council vow to 'learn lessons' after flood of complaints over queues into Dartmouth Park

Families were left furious at long delays to get into the park on Bonfire Night for the borough's biggest fireworks display, with some queuing for more than an hour.

Sandwell Council apologised for the chaos and said changes would be made to try ensure it did not happen again.

Bosses were called into a 'de-briefing' this morning to discuss what led to the delays.

Leisure boss Councillor Richard Marshall said staff were overwhelmed by higher-than-expected numbers as more than 15,000 people descended on the park.

He said making the display a pre-ticket event next year, which would mean no paying on the gate, was being considered to avoid a repeat of the problems.

The authority decided to axe its Tipton fireworks display this year, reducing the number of events in the borough to two and Councillor Marshall admitted that may have had an impact.

Organisation for the event was labelled a 'farce' and a 'shambles' by disgruntled visitors on Facebook.

It is the latest headache the council has faced over its fireworks displays.

An event was shifted from Brunswick Park in Wednesbury after a stray rocket flew into the crowd in 2014, injuring three people.

Councillor Marshall said: "We had more people than we expected. Being a paid-for event, we expected numbers to drop a little bit.

"By the looks of it, numbers increased due to Walsall Arboretum shutting early and Birmingham not having a main bonfire weekend.

"On top of that, there were five pay points but people were just queuing at the one.

"Staff said they went out on more than one occasion to tell them to queue at other entrances but they just weren't moving.

"Obviously we will have to learn lessons from this but we hold lots and lots of good quality events.

"There were issues with this one but we have a good track record in Sandwell of putting on good events for people."

The gates opened at 5.30pm, with the main fireworks display starting at 8.15pm. The show cost £3 for adults, £1.50 for children or £7.50 for a family ticket.

Angry visitors weighed in with criticism on social media following the fireworks display on Saturday.

Reishna Begum posted: "My five-year-old daughter and I queued for over an hour to get in.

"By the time I've we got in we had missed the Frozen characters that my daughter was so looking forward to seeing and luckily we were just in time for the fireworks but to be honest we could of watched them from outside without having to even pay. Quite disappointed."

Stella Stone said: "Queues were a joke. Little kids freezing and people queued for hours."

Colin Hunter added: "My partner and family went at 7pm were back home at 7.10pm - total waste of time - they said very poorly organised."

Visitor, Kelly Marie, added: "It was a shambles! I queued with my family for an hour to find out the gates had been closed, no one told us anything!"

Another poster, Steve Moreton, added: "This was a complete and utter shambles - the queues were horrendous. We were in queue for about 1hr 20 mins - kids were crying in front of us they missed the fireworks because they started the display while we were still queuing."

There were also complaints about the fireworks display at Edgbaston Stadium in Birmingham. The main event started around 30 minutes later than scheduled because of a technical fault, and some said on Twitter that the show itself was 'underwhelming'.

Edgbaston said it would be reviewing how the night went, as was standard with all major events.