Warwick church gets foodbank donations after racecourse cancels fixture due to weather conditions

Officials at Warwick Racecourse called off the December 8 fixture after temperatures dipped to an overnight low of -7°C.

To reduce food waste, a team from the racecourse dropped off the sandwiches, along with boxes of fruit and other items, to Saltisford Church in Albert Street in the town 24 hours later.

Tommy Williams, General Manager, said: “Once we made the decision to call off the meeting we arranged for the perishable food items to be donated to Saltisford Church, which has a foodbank and acts as a drop-in centre, where people can go collect these items.

“We have already worked with the church before this year after the meeting we had in September was called off for the Queen’s funeral where we did something similar.

“They were very appreciative of the donations especially at a time of year when it can be extremely tough for some people.”

Although the race was cancelled, the site was still able host 50 workers from Brackley based civil engineering group Agetur UK and 40 people from mechanical engineering firm Sodick Europe Ltd, which is located in the town, for their Christmas parties.

110 employees from National Grid also held a conference at the track before having a meal.

Tommy added: “Agetur are big supporters at Warwick and they had actually sponsored a race on the card. Despite there being no racing they were keen to support the course, while Sodick were keen to come with it being their staff Christmas party.

“I put on a tipping competition from the first four races at Taunton with the chance to win tickets at a future Warwick meeting.

"We had a fair amount of entries, about 70 from across the two Christmas parties, have a go, and that helped make a bit of atmosphere.

“We were able to allow these things to continue as there was no health and safety risk as the hard standing areas of the site were not frozen.

“By having both the conference and the Christmas parties it massively helped reduce the potential food waste we would have otherwise been left with which is a positive.”