The Tour of Britain cycle race, which hit the highways of Cheshire East in September, has been hailed a great success by Cheshire East Council who say it generated £3.5m additional revenue for the borough.
The Council has also announced that the event on September 6th boosted visitor income to an estimated £5.45m and attracted 300,000 spectators - apparently this was the highest number for the tour and equal to the turnout for the final stage in London.
Cheshire East Council invested more than £267,000 to attract this national event, which featured seven Olympic cyclists including Sir Bradley Wiggins and Mark Cavendish, to help put Cheshire East firmly on the map as a visitor destination.
Cheshire East Council deputy leader David Brown said: "This has been a truly fantastic event and our faith in the residents and businesses of Cheshire East, in the support they gave to the event, has been thoroughly rewarded.
"We have answered our critics, who said we should not have been doing this but the legacy value of the race – both economically and in terms of other outcomes – is without precedent in this borough.
"To stage an event on this scale – involving our Olympian cyclists, with 1.23 million television viewers and the huge profile and prestige this has brought to Cheshire East – has been a great triumph for the council, the Tour of Britain and, most of all, our residents and businesses."
A report on the legacy value of the event, based on independent research, has been prepared and presented to the council's cabinet.
The report states the event: "provided a number of areas of additional benefit, including business development, media profile, healthy living promotion, community engagement and destination promotion."
It added "It provides opportunities to give a legacy focus to cycling development, participation, active lifestyles, promotion of cycle networks and sustainable transport initiatives."
The Council has been awarded a grant of £350,000 by the Department of Transport for sustainable travel funding which will be used to support walking and cycling initiatives and promote healthy lifestyles.
The Council plans to drive forward a programme to make cycling an active and healthy alternative to motorised transport through improved cycling infrastructure and facilities, attracting more cycling events and addressing perceived barriers to cycling.
Comments
Here's what readers have had to say so far. Why not add your thoughts below.
Presumably the same person who calculates the voluntary redundancy payments for CEC "execs" came up with this figure.
Demonstrated once again.....
What were the CEC crime figures during the event period?
What do you know of the track record of the authors? Do you even know who the authors are? If you had actually read the report you would know nobody anywhere has said Cheshire East Council made £3.5 million. But why let that inconvenient fact get in the way of the usual tedious crowbarring of Lyme Green, IT companies, executive payoffs, etc. into the comments of almost every article?
An additional £3.5m spent in Cheshire East by 300,000 people? It's only a little over a tenner per person, with a little imagination it isn't hard to see how car parking, a spot of lunch, refreshments, people visiting somewhere else while here, hotels for those who travelled further, etc, etc could easily get you somewhere near that.
The report gives plenty of details of how this was calculated.
Maybe Wilmslow did benefit. Does anyone know?
As to the cost, Council documents show that the overall cost was circa £400,000 but income was circa. £130,000. So there was a substantial loss overall. It is clear that the Council hoped there would be sponsorship for the event which didn't materialise - whose fault that is we will never know. The above figure, do not include, of course, the cost of policing the event, - which they did with good humour and efficiency.
Was it all worth it? I don't know. What I do know is that the Council's "independent report" says it was. Which leaves two questions. How much did the "independent report" cost? Why is the cost of this "independent report" not included in the breakdown of their "costs"
With a history traceable back to the 1950s, the Tour of Britain has existed in various guises over the years, with the modern edition being revived in 2004 by British Cycling and current organisers SweetSpot Group, after a five-year absence from the global cycling calendar, The Tour of Britain is now a cornerstone of the sporting year and this country's biggest cycle race.
http://www.tourofbritain.co.uk/home.php
Also there are many of these hideous bicycles left lying around, which have not been removed, so who pays for this. However, one young person has solved the problem. He has "borrowed" one, and cycles around on it!!!!!