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Birmingham City Council bosses yesterday denied doing anything wrong in the way they organised a free pop concert at which more than 60 people were hurt in a crowd stampede.

Four people needed hospital treatment and 60 others were injured when the crowd surged forward during a performance by JLS, an English boyband who were runners up on The X Factor, breaching a metal barrier.

A council investigation is under way into what went wrong at the event at the city's Millennium Point, but yesterday Steve Hollingworth, the council’s assistant director for sport and events, appeared to pre-empt its findings by claiming that the authority had done everything it could to plan for the event.

Initial reports suggested that the emergency services had been warned to expect only 5,000 people, but Mr Hollingworth claimed that the event had been thoroughly planned for estimated numbers of 20,000.

“We planned for the event with the emergency services, we put measures in place. We were expecting a crowd of around 20,000 people which our measures took account of," he said.

“Due to the unprecedented amount of people that turned up and were pressing against the perimeter fence, the fence was breached.”

Mr Hollingsworth went on the defensive after the local MP Khalid Mahmood accused the council of causing the drama through bad planning.

He denied that the council had misjudged the interest in the free concert, which had been due to feature a host of chart-topping acts, including Sugababes, Tinchy Stryder, Chipmunk, Little Boots and Alexandra Burke. He said that the council had put a perimeter fence in place for the first time this year because it was aware that the event would be extremely popular.

“We had a concert last year with the Sugababes and Alesha Dixon and we didn’t do this,” he said.

“We were conscious of numbers and that’s why we introduced this perimeter fence. The fence was fine, it was the pressure of people outside the perimeter fence that was the issue.

“We took the decision very quickly with the emergency services to cancel the event which was the correct decision. We had a plan which we put in place very quickly.”

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