Football club has offer for carnival

Organisers of Ellesmere Carnival have been thrown a lifeline which could save this year's event, it emerged today.

Ellesmere Rangers Football Club has offered to rescue the carnival by stumping up £500 which organisers need to settle a post-event clean-up bill they claim Shropshire Council wants to charge them.

Dave Coles, club chairman, said: "I was made aware that the carnival was being cancelled. As it brings in an awful lot of revenue to the town I made a number of phone calls to colleagues at the club and other people and got together the £500 on behalf of the club and made the offer to the committee."

Alan Hinton, from the carnival committee, today welcomed the offer but said it would need to be voted on and warned it might be too late to rescue the carnival.

He said: "This offer came about after telling everyone that the carnival has been postponed until next year.

"Bands and dance troupes may have now already booked to go elsewhere after this news so it will be very difficult to do any kind of U-turn now."

Mr Hinton added the committee felt strongly about being charged. He said: "The football club worked hard raising this money and it seems wrong to hand it over to the council for an unjust charge."

Shropshire Council said it has been in discussions with the organisers about introducing fees to cover maintenance costs, but said no fee has been decided on and discussions are ongoing.