Lycetts Race Day raises over £14,500 for north east disability charity

The meeting, which took place at Newcastle Racecourse, was specifically organised with the aim of raising money for the charity, which improves the lives of disabled children, young people and adults with cerebral palsy and communication difficulties.

The Percy Hedley Foundation is a registered charity that works to help meet the needs of disabled children, young people and adults. The Foundation is one of the largest regional charities supporting disabled people and provides a wide range of high quality, specialist and personalised care and education support to over 1,000 families each year.

Lycetts is the appointed insurance broker to the Foundation and with generous support from race sponsors Brewin Dolphin, Gibson & Co, Mediaworks, Atlas Cloud and United Carlton Office Systems Ltd plus a number of other well known north east businesses, who purchased hospitality tables, a total of £14,522 was raised.

As well as representatives from the Percy Hedley Foundation bucket collecting donations from eager race fans, the day also featured a charity auction run by Doddie Weir, tipster advice from Tony Dobbin and raffle with all proceeds donated to the charity.

Charles Renwick, Head of Management Services at Lycetts, said: “We were looking to host a race day and it became apparent that what we were looking to do really fitted in well with The Percy Hedley Foundation.

“We had no idea how it would pan out. We originally expected 100 people to attend, but we ended up with 220 people and that’s because Percy Hedley is such a well-known charity.

“We have a very longstanding relationship with the Foundation and we value that. Lycetts is proud to be from the North East and it is fantastic to be associated with such a great charity.

“This is the first time we have hosted a race day and we hope it can be the start of something. We are already thinking about next year!”

Mike Elliot, Business Development Manager at Newcastle Racecourse, said: “We have known both Lycetts and The Percy Hedley Foundation for a long time so we were delighted to have been able to put the race day together.

“The racecourse has raised over £1 million through charity race days in the last 14 years and we are delighted The Percy Hedley Race Day was a success.”

Maria Hallett, fundraiser at The Percy Hedley Foundation said: “We can’t thank Lycetts and Newcastle Racecourse enough for making the event a huge success.

“Everyone was so generous on the day and it was a pleasure to work with both organisations.

“The money raised will support our Building Brighter Futures Appeal, which includes the construction of a new specialist junior school building on our existing Percy Hedley School site in Killingworth.

“It will enable us to provide vital education, therapy and support services to more disabled children and their families and we are extremely grateful to Lycetts and Newcastle Racecourse for supporting us.”