Wisbech's historic Rose Fair has been saved with an eleventh hour council grant after it emerged carnival organisers would have to pay £3,000 for traffic management.

Wisbech's historic Rose Fair has been saved with an 11th-hour council grant after it emerged that carnival organisers would have to pay £3,000 for traffic management.

Wisbech Round Table was stopped in its tracks by the new Road Traffic Act, which came into force last month.

It shifted responsibility for traffic management from the police to event organisers, leaving the Round Table facing a £3,000 bill.

Fenland council leader Geoff Harper said: "We were not about to let it go to the wall because of this latest piece of poorly thought-out legislation.

"Worthy charity events like the Rose Fair were not supposed to be crippled by bureaucracy in this way. There are community events up and down the country that are shutting down because they cannot afford to pay the cost of funding these traffic-management responsibilities and it is totally ridiculous," he said.

"We have stepped in to help the Rose Fair at the 11th hour, but in future it looks like event organisers are going to have to build these costs into their community grant bids."

Up to 15,000 attend the Rose Fair each July.

In last year's parade, a car struck the Clarkson Infant School float and narrowly avoided bringing down scaffolding poles outside the Octavia Hill Birthplace Museum.

Five people were injured in the collision.