New website to promote Shropshire Hills Discovery Centre

The newly designed site is part of a major overhaul of the £2.4 million Shropshire Hills Discovery Centre which opened in a blaze of publicity 13 years ago, but was costing Shropshire Council £120,000 a year to run by 2012.

Now Grow Cook Learn, a company that specialises in local food education, have taken over management of the struggling centre and have big plans to revitalise its fortunes.

A red kite feeding area has controversially been given planning permission this week, and Grow Cook Learn hopes to add a training kitchen to the centre's current attractions, which include exhibitions on the Shropshire hills, a cafe, and a replica of the famous Shropshire mammoth bones discovered in the 1980s.

Bosses said the dedicated website was part of a bid to improve the "whole visitor experience" at the centre in Craven Arms.

Valerie Meehan, manager at the centre, said: "We invited Shropshire Tourism to design and develop our new website and we love the result.

"The Discovery Centre still houses the exhibition that uncovers the secrets of the Shropshire Hills and of course the Shropshire Mammoth which features prominently in our new website design.

"There are already some significant changes taking place to the café and shop bringing a much greater focus on local food and local products.

"The new website gives us the platform we need to promote all of this and more, including our new events and plans for a red kite experience in the Autumn."

Kay Corbett, head of IT at Shropshire Tourism said: "It is a totally bespoke, responsive design ensuring it adapts to fit the screen size the visitor is viewing it on. It is also fully integrated with social media and enables the team at the Centre to easily add new events, photo galleries and much more, to really showcase their fantastic facilities, events and activities."

Plans to create a feeding area for the protected red kite were given the go ahead by Shropshire Council planners on Tuesday, despite fears from some local experts that the scheme is "ecologically unsound" and may make a nuisance of the birds, which are no longer endangered.

The plans involve building a bird hide enclosed by a 2.4 metre-high fence, to provide visitors to the centre the chance to view the red kites.

The hope is it will bring tourists flocking to Shropshire, as similar feeding sites had done in Rhayader, Powys.

Grow Cook Learn recently signed a seven-year lease to run the centre after it was sold off by Shropshire Council to the South Shropshire Housing Association at the start of the year.

The centre is open daily from 10am to 5pm. The website can be seen at www.shropshirehillsdiscoverycentre.co.uk.