A VILLAGE S fun weekend to raise money for the East Anglian Air Ambulance and the Burned Children s Charity could be without its star turn this year. A coach pull with fire officers racing against a pub team faces being cancelled because the organisers ar

A VILLAGE'S fun weekend to raise money for the East Anglian Air Ambulance and the Burned Children's Charity could be without its star turn this year.

A coach pull with fire officers racing against a pub team faces being cancelled because the organisers are not allowed to close the road for the event - at lunch time on Bank Holiday Monday.

The landlady at the White Hart in Warboys, Philippa Poloczek raised over �1,000 for the cause last year with four coach pulls with the vehicles supplied for free by Sun Fun Coaches.

This year, she has lined up a team from Huntingdon Fire Station against a team from her pub.

She applied to Cambridgeshire County Council to close Warboys High Street, from noon to 2pm on Monday, May 3.

She told The Hunts Post: "An official from Cambridgeshire County Council said we cannot close the road because you can't close the same road twice in a year and it will be closed in July for Feast Week.

"I was also told my diversion wasn't suitable (along School Road, Humberdale Way and Statford Green then back to the High Street) though we had the same diversion route last year."

Mrs Poloczek said she had been offered an alternative site for the coach pull a mile away at Warboys Airfield but she said it was too far to walk and she couldn't encourage her customers to drink and drive.

However, the rest of the fundraising week for both charities will go ahead including a quiz night on Tuesday, April 27, a pool match on Friday, April 30, a fire engine on display and poker night at the pub on Saturday, May 1. Sunday and Monday, the bank holiday weekend, will include a hog roast and the band, Cadillac Arrest, a bungee run and a surf simulator and on Monday, May 3, there will be a barbecue.

Mr Poloczek said: "We will give half the money to the Burned Children's Camp (an annual holiday for young burn victims) at Grafham Water and half to the air ambulance. I ride horses and there are so many accidents that so many different people may need one. It is a good cause and we wanted to raise money for it."

A spokesman for Cambridgeshire County Council said no formal application had been received from Mrs Poloczek. However in a telephone conversation she had been advised that at least eight weeks' notice was needed to close a road, the diversion she proposed would take traffic through a residential and an off-road site had been suggested to her.