Stall handlers at Wolverhampton Racecourse are to protest at the track amid claims poor training is putting lives at risk.

Around a dozen workers, who have the job of loading the horses into the starting stalls, are to demonstrate before racing starts at Dunstall Park on Monday.

It is the latest episode in a long-running saga involving stall handlers which started when track owner Arena Leisure brought in its own staff in 2005 to replace the usual pool from national company RaceTech.

Some of those involved in the row moved over RaceTech to work for Arena. Arena’s racing director Ian Renton said today: “We won an employment tribunal hearing last year involving another disaffected member of the stalls team when the allegations put forward that we were ignoring concerns about safety were totally dismissed as wholly incorrect, and the facts remain unchanged.”