Campaign to promote town gets under way

The campaign starts with a meeting for businesses

An initiative to promote a Shropshire town and help its businesses has said it wants to bring people closer together.

Make it Market Drayton is due to launch on Thursday evening with an event for local traders.

Helen McCabe, who is leading the campaign, said she felt the town had a lot to offer, but it was sometimes hard to find out what was going on and businesses did not always talk with each other.

"[The project is] just really about bringing businesses together, supporting each other and just sharing how great the town is," she said.

Ms McCabe, who ran a similar initiative to help Wem, started planning the Market Drayton campaign in February by walking around the town and getting to know people.

She said it was a "vibrant" place, which "just has so much" to offer.

She conceded, though, that traders were often "busy building their own business", so sparing time to meet up was difficult.

But meetings offered the chance to confer over how the town's trade could grow, she explained.

The first networking event is fully booked, but future events are planned, including one for voluntary groups, plus a community event in July.