WITH bitter disappointment organisers of Lymm Historic Transport Day have taken the decision to cancel this year’s event which was due to take place on June 27.
Until Monday this week, organisers had been counting the days to the return of its first major annual event in the village since 2019, Lymm Historic Transport Day.
The organising team had put massive effort into creating an event that was Step 3 compliant which had been given the green light by Warrington Borough Council’s Safety Advisory Group.
So while Step 4 on June 21st would have been welcome it was not critical to the event going ahead.
However on the same day that Boris Johnson announced a new Step 4 date of July 19th with all the freedoms that will hopefully bring to the whole country there was a separate announcement affecting Warrington, Cheshire and Liverpool. The measures, to be introduced immediately, will bring in surge testing and an increased vaccination programme. But more importantly for Transport Day, people were urged to minimise travel in and out of the affected areas.
The team met yesterday evening to consider the impact of this announcement.
“We would have hundreds of exhibitors and traders coming from all over the region, not to mention the thousands of visitors, many who have already booked from as far afield as Scotland and the South of England. Given this new guidance and the scale of our event, we felt we had no alternative but to take the responsible decision and cancel. In fact even before our own announcement, we received the first withdrawal from a key exhibitor late yesterday evening as a direct result of the new measures,” explained Event Director Alan Williams.
“It’s a bitter disappointment, particularly after all the efforts and amendments we had made to ensure a safe event. Like everyone we had been anxiously watching as case counts started to rise locally but with hospital Covid admissions in Warrington still very low we remained optimistic that we would be able to go ahead with our outdoor event”.
Work will now start immediately on informing the hundreds of exhibitors, traders, suppliers and attractions for many of whom this would have been their first event since 2019.
Advance ticket-holders, of whom there are nearly 1,400, will be notified and refunded as soon as possible.
The forced late cancellation will have put a sizeable, but hopefully not terminal, dent in the volunteer organisation’s finances when they come to consider the event’s future later in the year.
