Context
Kop Hill Climb is a quintessentially English hill climb, held annually on Kop Hill in Princes Risborough, Buckinghamshire. Established in 1910, it ran as a competitive motorsport event until 1925, then returned in 2009 as a timed, non-competitive event that now draws around 15,000 visitors each September.
Run entirely by volunteers as a registered charity, the event raises money for local good causes while bringing together car and motorcycle enthusiasts from across the country. With around 800 vehicles taking part over the weekend, the logistics of registering, parking and grouping vintage vehicles are complex.
Challenge
For several years the event relied on a bespoke booking system built by a trusted partner. When that partner retired, the team faced an urgent decision: adopt an off-the-shelf system, none of which were designed for car events of this type, commission something entirely new, or find a technology partner who understood the event.
The requirements were far from simple. The system needed to handle a large volume of applications and a structured selection process, let entrants upload vehicle photos and manage their own entries, allocate hill run numbers and paddock spaces, and produce clear reports and passes for teams ranging from gate staff to commentators. As a charity run by volunteers, it also had to be cost-effective, reliable and simple for participants, many of whom are not especially tech-savvy.
Approach
Working to a clear brief and a tight timeline, we built a bespoke booking and event-management system from the ground up, designed around the specific workflows of Kop Hill Climb.
- An intuitive online booking portal for vehicle entrants, replacing a clunky predecessor
- A selection and acceptance workflow, with real-time visibility of available spaces
- Automated paddock pass generation, pulling together hill run numbers, row allocations and vehicle details
- A live data feed into Power BI for flexible, reusable reporting
- An API integration to collect vehicle data from the DVLA
The website, which had previously crashed under traffic in the week before the event, was also rebuilt and hosted by us, providing a stable, scalable platform that handles the annual surge in visits without issue.
"We were Alun's testbed in the best possible way. He could develop something genuinely useful, and we got a system that really works for us."
Outcome
The new system has transformed how Kop Hill Climb manages its entries and operations, saving the volunteer team significant time every year and giving participants a much smoother experience.
- A user-friendly booking portal that reduces the volume of support queries
- Real-time reporting dashboards showing acceptance numbers, payments and outstanding actions
- Automated paddock passes that previously required significant manual effort
- A reliable, high-traffic website that has not gone down once since we took over hosting
"We now have a system that genuinely helps us run a better event. Given that we're all volunteers, the time savings are invaluable."