A local business group has announced that it will no longer organise festive Christmas trees for shop fronts in Knaresborough after this year.
The Knaresborough Business Collective (KBC), which has overseen the tree installation for five consecutive years, said the decision follows “an awful lot of grief, nastiness and hate” and that they “quite simply had enough.”
They added that they are issuing the announcement early in order to “give another group or organisation ample time to sort them".
Over the years, the Collective has built a relationship with local tree supplier Stockeld Park, sourcing locally‐grown six-foot Normann Fir trees.
They have also installed around 35 additional tree brackets to shop frontings to enable greater inclusion of local businesses.
A spokesperson said:
“It is a hard slog with days of messy, wet, hard work and many sleepless nights, personal loss of earnings for our businesses and paid childcare/staff as well as the massive mess left behind in our yard.
“Then weeks of being on standby for broken lights/loose brackets and the great British weather blowing them off.
“To go through all that and have nothing but horrible small-minded comments every year is hard and we just don’t think we can do it again. Sorry and we hope you understand.”
The decision now leaves the task of organising the shop-front trees in Knaresborough open to another group or volunteer body who wish to step in.
Among those who have expressed an interest is Knaresborough Chamber.
A spokesperson said:
"We want to thank you for doing the trees for the last 5 years, your efforts have not gone unnoticed.
"We appreciate the hard work that goes into this job as we did it for over a decade.
"We can discuss us taking back installing the towns Christmas trees. Thanks again for the last 5 years."
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