Star date: 13th December 2016

MANCHESTER COUNCIL HANDS TRAFFIC TICKET TO MR AND MRS SANTA CLAUS

Manchester City Council has handed a traffic violation ticket to the Salford Santa sleigh which led the convoy of bikes, trikes and scooters taking gifts to sick children at Manchester Children's Hospital earlier this month.

"They can see we're on the Santa sleigh dressed as Santa Claus and Mrs Santa and they still give us a ticket" says Steve `Beaver' Brown of the Vesperados Scooter Club which organised the Santa Run "It is very, very wrong to me."

Full details here...

On the first Sunday in December, residents of Manchester and Salford lined the streets to cheer on hundreds of bikes, trikes, scooters and classic cars as the convoy bearing gifts for poorly children at Manchester Children's Hospital rode by, led by a giant sleigh complete with Santa and Mrs Santa Claus.

Setting off from the Henry Boddington pub in Salford, it was one the city's finest sights of the year, with riders dressed in festive outfits and the vehicles decked out with tinsel.

Unfortunately, a few days after the event, everything turned a bit sour, as Manchester City Council delivered its own `presents' through participants' post boxes.

Members of the Skoda Car Club which took part in the convoy got traffic violation tickets, as did the driver of the sleigh carrying Mr and Mrs Santa Claus. Unwittingly, after dropping off all the presents to the delighted children, they had turned from the Hospital onto a bus lane on Oxford Road, between Hathersage Road and Denmark Road, and had been captured by cameras.

"They can see on the photos that we're on the Santa sleigh dressed as Santa Claus and Mrs Santa and they still give us a ticket" says Steve `Beaver' Brown of the Vesperados Scooter Club which organised the Santa Run

"It is very, very wrong to me" he adds "Every time we've done the Santa and Easter egg run we've always gone up that main road and then, all of a sudden, they change it to a bus lane. We do the Santa Run from the bottom of our hearts, and we give up our Sunday to do it because we know that the children in hospital are going to get something great from it."

A spokesman for Manchester City Council told the Salford Star: "From the picture evidence it looks like a flat bed truck had gone into the bus gate on Oxford Road. However, the fine had already been paid a few days ago and we didn't receive an appeal about the enforcement action - had we done, the case would've been reviewed."*

For full details of this year's Santa Run see previous Salford Star article – click here

* The sleigh driver did pay the fine as he was worried that if he had appealed and lost it would have doubled