FOR many people Christmas may be a time of excess but one group of Bradford workmates have taken a more austere approach to the festivities.

Revellers may have been celebrating hard elsewhere last night but a group of staff from the ABS UK printing firm took the decision to walk into the city from their Euroway offices for an outdoors sleepover before repeating the journey on foot today. The event was organised to raise money for Nightstop, an organisation which works with young homeless people in the city.

Colleagues James Graley, Stacey Langley, Ben Tighe, David Lees and Brett Abson used their own discomfort to raise money through sponsorship and have already gone beyond the target of £1,000 they originally set.

Mr Lees said: “Instead of a few Christmas beers we decided to donate the cost of a night out to the local homeless charity Bradford Nightstop. We then decided that we would try and raise more money for this fantastic charity by sleeping out ourselves. This is nothing compared to what many people face every single day."