A KNUTSFORD park has had to say no to a BBC presenter after he told the country he was looking to stage a charity car festival there.

BBC Radio Two breakfast host Chris Evans planned to bring Car Fest North – a charity motoring festival – to Tatton Park, in September.

The DJ has already set up the event in the south for the August Bank Holiday weekend at Laverstoke Park, in Hampshire.

More than 20,000 tickets for that event, in aid of Children in Need, sold out in a day last week, so Mr Evans turned his attention to setting up an event in the north.

During his show, he told his 8.8 million listeners that he would look for places to stage it, including Tatton Park.

On Monday he told listeners he was heading ‘north’ to visit the Knutsford attraction and the other venues.

But Tatton Park told the Guardian on Monday they had already told the broadcaster last week they couldn’t hold the event due to a number of factors.

Graham Jones, commercial services manager at Tatton Park, said they had recommended Cholmondeley and Harewood House, in Leeds, instead.

“It’s causing us a bit of a problem as we have got our event organisers ringing us up saying ‘what are we doing’ but we don’t know what is going on,” he said.

“We have a number of classical car and food events at Tatton Park and we have got contracts in place, and we don’t want to go with it because it would cause a problem with them.

“We’d love to help out, but when we spoke to his organiser on Friday we told him we had the triathlon on the weekend of September 8 and 9.

“It’s great that they are talking about Tatton Park as a venue, but we can’t do the weekend he is looking at.

“Something for Children in Need would be great, but we can’t kick off somebody who is already booked with us.”