Shrewsbury Town begin installation of safe standing at Montgomery Waters Meadow - with video

In 2017, £65,000 was raised for the Supporters’ Parliament-led initiative which will see 555 rail seats placed into the Salop Leisure South Stand.

The rail seats have been made by local company Ferco Seating and the fitters were at the stadium early on Tuesday morning to start the work, which is scheduled to take two weeks.

Town CEO Brian Caldwell has been involved with the process from the beginning and is delighted to see the installation begin.

“They were here at 7.30am”, said Brian. “The plan is to get most of the seats out and then start working on installing the safe standing units, so it’s a nice sight to see them starting the work.

“It’s going to hopefully help the atmosphere going forward.

“Hopefully, having that big body of support behind the South Stand, cheering the team on, will help us in the long term as well.

“It’s good for the town as well that we are putting Shrewsbury on the map.

“We’ve had unbelievable coverage for safe standing and what’s happened with West Brom recently has highlighted it and had everyone wanting to speak to us again about it. The fact that we are getting the safe standing units to be the first installed in England and Wales is going to be huge and there will be media interest on the club again.”

Roger Groves, joint chair of the Supporters Parliament said now was a great time to be a supporter of the club.

“It is really exciting to see the safe stands go in,” he said. “We have done so much background work on this to see it taking shape is great. It is like buying a new house off plans and then seeing it all come together.

"It would not have been possible without the support we have from the fans and businesses who helped us raise £65,690. We had money from the club as well as £10,000 from Fansbet which really boosted the funds.

“I was down at the ground and was so proud to see it all go in. It has been brilliant to finally see it come to fruition..”