A garden centre beseiged by children visiting Santa has pledged to improve its arrangements after tearful youngsters queued in vain to enter his grotto.

Excited children queued expectantly for Santa at Alton's Garden Centre on the A127 near Rayleigh - only to be turned away.

Among those disappointed were Carol and Cliff Ottewell, of Downhall Road, Rayleigh, who took their children Lauren, eight, and James, two, to see Santa.

Mrs Ottewell said: "After waiting in a very long queue for 20 minutes, trying to keep our very excited children well-behaved, we were turned away and told they would be closing in another hour.

"There was quite a queue behind us. You cannot imagine how sad it was, being surrounded by crying, disappointed children.

"There was this little girl behind us who was in absolute floods of tears. She was inconsolable. It really did upset me."

She suggested notices could be put up announcing that the queue was closed from that point, rather than let people stand there waiting.

One of the centre's owners, Carol Cline, said: "We have a heated building where people would be waiting for up to 45 minutes to an hour, but we had no way of knowing people would be prepared to wait out in the cold for much longer on top of this.

"We will put up some extra notices for next year.

"This weekend was the crunch time for us, because the schools had broken up and everyone was bringing their children along.

"We have been totally stunned by the amount of people wanting to come, and the length of time they were prepared to wait.

"On one occasion we had 400 children wanting to see Santa in one afternoon."

To try and prevent even longer delays, arrangements were made for Santa to work through lunch and everyone who rang the centre was advised of the queues.

Carol added: "In future we will have a cut-off point in the queue, or extra notices saying how much longer people will have to wait.

"I don't think we have had any other complaints about this."

So far 5,000 children have seen busy Santa at Alton's since November 14, and as well as getting a good long chat with him, they went home with a toy and a seedling Christmas tree in a pot.

Festive heartbreak - Lauren and baby James queued with mum Carol Ottewell to see Santa - only to be turned away

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