The offices of the Manchester Evening News had to be evacuated during a bomb scare in the city centre.

Staff were told to leave their desks and gather near their Deansgate office at around 2.40pm as the final edition of the day’s paper was being transmitted to the print centre.

The evacuation lasted around 45 minutes.

The incident meant that one or two of the updated pages of the final edition had to be sacrificed, but most of the edition was saved.

The timing of the scare also meant that it missed that day’s print editions of the paper but news of the event was published almost immediately on the paper’s website ManchesterOnline.

Content editor Sarah Hartley said: “While the police and bomb disposal officers were at the scene, I was able to set up a temporary office at home and start reporting on the situation online as I only live a short distance away from the office.

“However, it was all over very quickly and was a false alarm so everyone made it back to the office to update.”

The following day the MEN revealed that the scare had been sparked by a motorist who was trying to avoid paying a £3 parking fee and parked his car on a pavement close to the city’s Crown Court building rather than use a nearby multi-storey car park.

The newspaper’s offices and several other buildings, including the Crown Courts, Magistrates Courts, and various shops and restaurants were evacuated after police spotted a briefcase on the back seat of the car.

A registration check revealed a discrepancy in the number plate and the alert was only lifted after the owner turned up at the cordon line and asked police why they were so interested in his car.

He told officers he didn’t want to pay to park and was summonsed for having no tax or MOT, and driving on the pavement.

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