York's racecourse staff swapping pens for paintbrushes to avoid job losses

Office staff will swap pens and laptops for grout and trowels as Covid 19-hit York attempts to avoid the threat of redundancies.

The track, which has lost more than four-fifths of its revenue with no customers allowed on site for racing or most non-raceday activities, is keen to retain its employees and will be putting them to work on improvements that would ordinarily have been done by outside contractors.

Just a handful of functions for the legal maximum 15 or fewer people are currently booked at a venue which usually hosts 8,000 paying guests at parties over the Christmas period.