On Sunday 3rd December, the newest Santa Fun Run fundraiser for Alice House Hospice took place in Hartlepool, in Ward Jackson, near The Place in the park cafe. The event, which runs every year, is sponsored by DMB wealth management and Redhead associates, with entertainment being supervised by Gavin Lancaster from Higham Discos. The local hospice's mascot, Alice the mouse, also repeated her appearance at the event as she posed for photos with participants.

The event, which encourages participation from all types of people (and their dogs in festive jumpers) consists of a single lap of the park and provides costumes to all who take part. Children are provided with either a Santa hat or set of reindeer antlers, and adults receive Santa costumes. Children also receive a medal for taking part. Entrance can cost either £5 for children, £10 for adults or £25 for families of four, and people are also encouraged to bring sponsor forms and donate any extra money made on the day to the hospice.

Hartlepool resident Ava Wright -pictured above- has been attending the event for 3 years now and believes that the Santa fun run is "a good excuse to bring people together to raise some money for a good cause and just have some fun.", and says she plans to keep coming back to the event even if she ends up moving away from the town.

This year, the event was rebranded on the day to being more of a Santa fun walk due to poor weather conditions - the weekend of the run was the only weekend of snow the town has experienced in December this year, with temperatures reaching 3 degrees celsius that morning. The weather also resulted in the event being moved back an hour to 11am due to concerns that the ice was dangerous and had caused cancellations. Videos and posts on social media said the event was in fact going ahead, and the numbers of participants eventually increased to the highest it ever has.