'If we don't fight our corner we'll never open again': Future of funfairs in Wakefield in jeopardy?

That's the warning from one travelling showman who says he's been denied the cash he needs for his business to survive.

Paul Earnshaw runs around a dozen fairs a year across the Wakefield district and takes his rides across other parts of Yorkshire too.

But he is at odds with Wakefield Council after they banned him from operating on October 21, a fortnight before the second lockdown came in and when the district was under Tier Two restrictions.

The authority said the event, which was to run on Jacob's Well Lane in the city, would have led to people from different households mixing in a small area.

But Mr Earnshaw, 44, said he'd run Covid secure fairs across the county since the end of the first lockdown and that the cancellation put him £5,000 out of pocket.

He says he's not been given the same help from the council that other small businesses have been entitled to.

Mr Earnshaw said: "No other councils took issue with the fairs that we ran during the summer.

"It's safer than the local park with swings and a slide, because we've got staff who'll clean the equipment after every ride.

"We were giving out face masks to everyone who came. We had hand sanitiser and we kept people apart on rides. Everything was checked and signed off.

"It's frustrating and disappointing because we'd worked so hard to make everything safe."

Mr Earnshaw, from Rothwell, said similar attractions were allowed to keep running before lockdown was re-introduced and described the approach the council had taken as "unfair".

He's appealed to the government over the decision and is waiting to hear their response.

With the likelihood of West Yorkshire going into Tier Three when lockdown ends next week, he said that the survival of his business was now "on a knife edge".

He and his business partner have already had to lay their seven staff off.

"If we don't fight our corner, we'll never open again," he added.

"That's not just me, that's travelling showpeople everywhere who are struggling.

"I wouldn't like to guess how much I've lost this year but it will be thousands and thousands.

"I guarantee you, when the shops re-open next week, they will be rammed and that's because people won't have anywhere else to go or anything else to do.

"We're not allowed to run and bowling alleys will be shut and yet we've shown we can run safely.

"We're there to bring people joy and the effect of all this on kids' mental health is massive. They need something to do, because all they've had this year is Covid, Covid, Covid."

Responding to the issue on a Facebook Q&A session run by the council on Monday, Wakefield's director of public health Anna Hartley, said leaving fairs open would be a "significant risk".

She said: "I absolutely appreciate how hard the fairs worked to make themselves Covid secure, but when we took the decision it was felt with the case numbers rising so quickly and the pressures on the health system at that point, that we couldn't support fairs.

"It wasn't just in Wakefield. It was a decision that was taken across West Yorkshire.

"We know that when people are on rides there's a lot of shouting and screaming and that pushes a lot of the virus into the air and that significantly increases risk.

"I hope as much as everyone does, that the vaccine will come into play and we'll be able to open up all areas of our economy in the new year, but we're not there yet.

"It's a very tough time. These are difficult decisions and I recognise it does have an impact on people."

Mr Earnshaw was also advised to contact the council's business support section to see what he was entitled to.

Local Democracy Reporting Service