The landlord of an award-winning pub claims that Chester Races are bad for business in the city as he says they attract 'horrible people' and drive locals away.
Trevor Summerhill is the landlord of the Olde Cottage, which has been Chester's Pub Of The Year four times. He told Cheshire Live that the Chester race meetings cause chaos in the city and he believes people come to the races 'to behave badly'.
He also says there simply aren’t enough taxis to deal with the thousands of race-goers who descend on the city.
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Trevor described the scene as racegoers attended his Brook Street pub last month on August 20. Trevor said: “They were very ignorant, quite abusive. It didn’t end up in a fight or anything like that, but they come in for the races and they are just horrible people.
“When you get groups like that it’s terrible. We normally don't get that many in this neck of the woods because we're out of town. So you normally get the people who are drifting towards the railway station at night.
“Local people go to other places on race nights, many will go to Liverpool or just stay in when the races are on. The race crowd who you get in are just ignorant.”
Trevor also said there’s a dearth of private hire cabs in Chester due to the fact that during the pandemic many drivers left the trade and did not return. When the races are on there’s little chance of getting a cab home, he said. “You can't get taxis on the race nights, so your locals don't come out. So normally the races affect us financially quite badly. When they rebuilt Chester railway station they moved everyone up City Road so no one comes down Brook Street anymore", he said.
"We had a gentleman in the pub who was 80 years old. He's got no chance. The taxi firms won't even answer the phones to us. The only thing you can do is walk down the railway station you might get a black cab down there.
“After 11pm you’ve got no chance of getting a taxi. You have got to remember we have 16,000 people go to the races. Everyone else is wanting to go home as well. How do you cope with that amount of people?”
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