Winter attraction Lapland UK is poised to move from Kent to Windsor - but could be back one day if the new location proves a success.

The company that has operated for six years at Bewl Water, Lamberhurst, and employed around 250 people around the busy Christmas period, hopes to set up on the Windsor estate this winter.

Lapland UK, founded by Mike and Alison Battle, has applied to Bracknell council to run the winter extravaganza on a three-acre site in commercial forest.

“We’ve got the opportunity to move there and we feel the timing is right,” said Mr Battle. “It’s a very accessible site. That said, it doesn’t mean that we might not in the future come back to Kent. We’ve always had a good time in Kent and it could be the case as we develop as a company that we would run two sites.”

Mr Battle said the new site had great road and public transport links. “Part of the difficulty of Bewl is that you can’t get there by public transport which unfortunately rules out a number of our customers. But this new site does have links to public transport which is very helpful.”

He paid tribute to the wonderful people in Kent and Sussex who had worked for the business. “It’s a shame we can’t take them all with us,” he said. But some who might be studying in the Windsor area or have relatives there could return for the winter season.

“We’re a smallish and innovative company and we’re trying to steadily and robustly move forward, make sure that we keep our eye on the ball wand attention to detail. I have all my best heads setting up the new site in the Windsor area but hopefully we will come to the other side of that, we may have some new options.”

Lapland UK has faced problems, going into administration three years ago when bad winter weather and the economic downturn caused cashflow issues.

Mr Battle said: “We’re a new idea and it takes a little bit of time. There’s no manual to running a new business and there were a few tricky points but we’ve always had the support of the public. But we do lots of good work, we make lots of children very happy and we do lots of charity work.”

Kent had put the company on the map and given an opportunity to develop the business. “We’ll always be grateful to Kent,” Mr Battle said.