ITV’s Christmas fundraising appeal Text Santa has announced that in 2015 it raised £8.5m - £2.3m more than the previous year.

The 2015 appeal, which ran from 1 December 2015, raised £8.4m during a three-hour television event on 18 December and a further £100,000 after the broadcast.

The £8.5m figure beat the previous highest ever total of £6.2m, which was raised by the appeal in 2014 with further donations set to come in.

All money raised during the appeal will be shared equally between three charities: Macmillan Cancer Support, Save the Children and Make-A-Wish Foundation UK. All other costs were met by ITV itself.

In a statement released by ITV, the £8.5m figure raised on the day “now takes Text Santa’s overall fundraising to £29.5m for charitable causes over the last five years”. The statement also attributes the success of 2015’s appeal to contributing “more airtime than ever to showcasing the great work of our charity partners”.

ITV also partnered with clothing manufacturer Primark as part of its Christmas Jumper Day, who donated £1.50 to the appeal for every Christmas jumper it sold between 1 and 17 December.

The 2015 Text Santa partner charities were selected from a pool who “had previously registered an interest in working in partnership with ITV, fulfilled our criteria and shared our vision and ambition”.