Car rally praised for 'huge impact' on Shropshire

A car rally in the Shropshire countryside has been credited with bringing extra business to towns along the route.

The Hills Ford Rally Stages event was held in the county for the first time over the weekend of September 19-20, with a ceremonial start in Shrewsbury.

Seb Slater from Shrewsbury Business Improvement District (BID), a group which represents businesses in the town, said footfall had been up 26% compared to the previous year.

Heather Kidd, the leader of Shropshire Council, said: "We know that a lot of the pubs and restaurants were full, so the economic impact was huge."

The rally brought 150 competitors from across the UK, for the closed-road races.

Shrewsbury BID said more than 46,000 people visited the town centre and Slater said: "It's actually one of the busiest Saturdays we've had for that time of year since we started counting back in 2015."

"In terms of feedback from businesses, it's been really positive," he added.

Slater also said people had said "it was something different for Shrewsbury" and there had been a "real buzz seeing all those cars on Claremont Street".

He said he hoped the rally would return in 2027 and in a statement on their website, the organisers said they had "already been inundated with positive responses to the event and many requests to please run it again next year".

The statement said the organising team from Cheltenham Motor Club had received a "warm and positive welcome"

It also said they believed the county had seen "a massive tourism boost with hotels, pubs, restaurants all enjoying a busy weekend".

Before the race came to the county, some had expressed concerns about the impact on the quiet countryside.

One of them had been Simon Scott, who farms at Harnage Ground, near Cound.

The rally passed through his land and he said: "We were slightly apprehensive beforehand as to what it was going to entail and as to whether there was going to be a risk of damage to the farmyard and to the to the old walls and things."

However, he said: "Once we'd resigned ourselves to the fact that it was going ahead we made the best of it."

Tractors were brought into the fields the night before and only spraying was disrupted.

Overall, he said his experience of the race turned out to be fairly positive.

He praised the event for being "very well organised" and said the marshals had been helpful, putting out hay bales and a chicane to slow down traffic.

The road closures did disrupt some of his planned work, he said, but he admitted he "quite enjoyed the event in the end".

"I could walk out of the house and stand and watch it and as there wasn't much else that we could do for the day, I saw quite a bit of the event," he explained.

His only request was that if the rally returns to Shropshire, it varies the route next time.

"I think it would be fair to move it around rather than have the same people affected again," he said.

Heather Kidd was also positive in her reflections of the event.

She said it had been "very well supported" with 200-300 people making use of each of the viewing areas.

"Across the Shropshire hills, that's a lot of people coming in with money and so on," she said.

"We know that Bishop's Castle had all its accommodation booked out."

There had been some "teething problems," she said, but with the organisers keen to return, she said Shropshire Council would have a "proper review" to get a "very clear view of both sides of this for the future".

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