ANVIL Arts will be reopening its venues at full capacity from September, the organisation's CEO has revealed.

Speaking to the Gazette, Matthew Cleaver said it had been "absolutely fantastic" to see people begin to reenter the venues as part of distanced, "pilot" performances since June.

The trust, which runs the Anvil and Haymarket venues as well as a number of community and outreach projects across the borough, has not been able to sell at full capacity since before the coronavirus pandemic.

Mr Cleaver said: "It's been great to see audiences back in the buildings and the response from them has been absolutely fantastic. The excitement that people have come back through the doors with has been really great to see."

"The social distanced performances that we had in the end of June and July were really pilots, top get people back in the building an understand how we ran the building with new measures in place. But what we're looking at from September is selling to full capacity and we will obviously see what government guidelines are enforced at that time, with another announcement later this month, so we can all be sure we're working in the right way."

However, Mr Cleaver reassured visitors that steps would remain in place to keep everyone safe and, while there will be no capacity limits, many measures will stay including hand sanitising stations and screens at the bar and box office counters.

He added: "We can see a really full programme from September onwards and lot of sell-out performances already, but we've got the See It Safely certificate so people can come back to our venues with confidence."