Thousands of parents and young children have been left disappointed after a Christmas spectacular planned for Epsom has been cancelled at the last minute.

On Tuesday morning, North Pole UK, which was endorsed by Epsom and Ewell Council, scrapped its plans to hold its Christmas Fair at Hook Arena claiming it “could not deliver the event to the high standards wanted”.

However, the Epsom Guardian can reveal the company had not even hired any workers for the event even though customers claimed it was still selling £25 tickets as recently as Sunday.

The fair, which was due to have a Santa’s Grotto, a skating rink, snow tubing slope, funfair and European Christmas stalls, was scheduled to run from November 28 until Christmas Eve.

The cancellation took place less than two months after North Pole UK company director Paul Lowin, from Kingston, vowed not to disappoint Epsom residents.

In a press release trumpeting the “wonderful, exciting experience”, Mr Lowin wrote: “I felt sad for the children whose dreams and expectations had been dashed following a couple of disastrous Christmas attractions in recent years.”

His words came back to haunt him as the company is now forced to refund all of the disappointed parents who pre-booked 3,000 tickets to the now cancelled event.

One grandmother Barbara Dack, 50, from Morden, booked seven tickets in October and spent a total of £175.

She said: “I’ve just got to break the news to the children now. It won’t be easy because they were really looking forward to it.”

Epsom and Ewell Council’s leisure committee had endorsed company North Pole UK Ltd and hired out the Hook Road Arena venue for the Christmas fair.

On Tuesday morning, the council announced the company had cancelled the event because of “unforeseen circumstances”.

Mr Lowin told Epsom Guardian: “We just reached the point where we realised that the quality of the event was becoming compromised and rather than running something below our standards we decided to cancel it and give everyone their money back.

“It’s extremely disappointing, but it was the honest and correct thing to do.”

Mr Lowin said they originally had tried a different venue in Walton-on-Thames, but it proved “impossible” to get a licence for it, so the company turned to Epsom Council to support the event.

Councillor Sean Sullivan, leader of the Conservative opposition, said: “I think this shows that the council cannot pull off big events.

“We have seen them mess up the concerts at the Downs last year and now we see them disappointing hundreds of residents just before Christmas. I think the question is ‘why do they keep entering into agreements with people who can’t deliver?’”

A council spokeswoman said: “The leisure committee chairman and chief executive of the council approved the decision to hire out Hook Road Arena to this company.

“The company was checked rigorously from the initial meeting. North Pole UK has delivered what it said it would do – that it would not put on the event if it was not going to be of a high enough standard.”

Councillor Clive Woodbridge, chairman of the leisure committee, said: “We are obviously disappointed at this news but feel it is the right decision and fully support it. Both the council and North Pole UK hoped to bring a high quality event to the borough but it is better to cancel now to avoid causing any further upset.”

North Pole UK has announced on its website: “A series of unforeseen setbacks has led to us being in a position where we can no longer offer the high quality event we had hoped to.

“We realise our customers will be disappointed but we felt it better to make a clear decision now rather than put on a less than perfect event.

“We are in the process of refunding all our customers in full.

“We sincerely apologise to our customers and traders.”

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