One in three adult weekday visitors to Alton Towers lied to get time off

The park has discovered one in three of its adult visitors during the week has lied to employers to spend a day there.

The Federation of Small Businesses is angry Alton Towers has recently paid for the web address ihatework.co.uk.

The group claims the park is acting irresponsibly - but Alton Towers argues it is not its job to cut absenteeism.

Not guilty

The Federation of Small Businesses said it was outraged the park had paid for the internet site within the past few weeks.

It said absenteeism was a major problem for the nation's businesses, costing the UK economy �10bn each year.

The group has now called for the park to take down the website, which promotes visits to the attraction instead of going to work.

It's not up to us to reduce absenteeism and if workers want to take advantage of the mid week deals, why not? Marketing manager Mike Lorimer

The Staffordshire-based theme park said its own research showed that one in three adult weekday visitors should have been at work.

It said that one in 10 of those people had not bothered to warn their employers of their absence, and that nine out of 10 did not feel guilty about their actions.

A third of people said they hated their jobs so much they did not care about the consequences.

Alton Towers insists it does not condone visitors lying to have time off work and that is not responsible for helping to cut absenteeism.

Marketing manager Mike Lorimer said: "We were actually quite surprised by the number of skivers we appear to have on park, and expect our Ihatework.co.uk website to be really popular as a result.

"They do all our other visitors a favour, especially families, by spreading visits more evenly and thus reducing queuing at peak times.

"It's not up to us to reduce absenteeism, and if workers want to take advantage of the mid-week deals, why not?"