Oswestry for Sale: One HMO at a Time – No Locals Need Apply

Welcome to Oswestry – market town, heritage site, and now, apparently, an investment hotspot for property entrepreneurs with a penchant for overleveraged shell companies, complex corporate structures, and the irresistible scent of government housing contracts.

Some towns get a railway station. Some get a regeneration fund. Oswestry gets HMOs.

Cross Street: The Foot in the Door

Let’s start at 23 Cross Street, where a planning application (25/01940/FUL) has been lodged to

convert the upper floors of a commercial property into a six-bedroom House in Multiple Occupation (HMO).  The access down an alleyway best described as “knife-muggable.” It promises tightly packed residents, communal living, and almost certainly no locals involved. The applicant? One Bhupinderjit “Jassy” Sidhu, a Walsall-based property investor operating via a delightful ensemble of companies, notably Your Property Ventures Ltd.

Now, Oswestry is not a student town. There’s no sudden influx of young professionals clamouring for communal kitchens and shared bathrooms. So the burning question: who exactly are these HMOs for? With access down an alleyway best described as “knife-muggable.” It promises tightly packed residents, communal living, and almost certainly no locals involved.

Cross Street & The Smithfield Connection

23 Cross Street isn’t a one-off. There are clear connections to 1 Salop Road – better known to many as the former Smithfield Hotel, now a half-renovated relic of its past. That property is currently in advanced negotiations for sale, with funding already lined up. From the outside, it looks like yet another redevelopment. From the inside? It’s more Monopoly board than local housing plan – only here, the dice are loaded.

The Smithfield Hotel: Enter Stage Left

It gets better. Or worse, depending on your fondness for transparency. Sidhu and his network – which

includes Shyam Panchal (of Milton Keynes) and Jasdeep Sahota (of Birmingham) – are in the process of acquiring 1 Salop Road, better known as The Smithfield Hotel. Once a functioning hotel, then a failed residential conversion, it’s now a hollow shell with potential. The same people who filed for 23 Cross Street are already securing legal charges against The Smithfield through YPV 1 Ltd.

Coincidence? Pull the other one.

Who Are These For, Exactly?

Let’s get the obvious out of the way: Oswestry is not a university town. It has no major student population. So who are these properties aimed at? The planning documents are curiously vague, but if one applies that quaint old method known as common sense, the likely conclusion isn’t “young professionals” or “retiring couples.”

The nature of the accommodation – multiple occupancy, low privacy, shared facilities – all points to bulk-housing use. Some might even say it looks tailor-made for government contract housing. You know, the kind of bulk tenancy deals signed by departments that prefer discretion to consultation. And SERCO and G4S providing security.

It’s probably just a coincidence that a growing number of former hotels and large homes are suddenly being flipped into HMOs by companies with opaque structures, registered in towns like Milton Keynes, often through nominee directors and mail-forwarding services. Yes, probably just a coincidence.

High Leverage, Low Accountability

These aren’t quaint property developers tinkering with buy-to-lets. This is a high-volume, debt-leveraged network of companies churning through acquisitions with all the grace of a wrecking ball. Charges filed with Together Commercial Finance, Shawbrook, and others reveal a business model built on floating charges, interlocking directorships, and mortgages with more strings than a Westminster press release.

Oswestry Council: Fast Asleep or Politely Ignoring?

Shropshire Council has yet to approve the Cross Street application, but one wonders whether the

issue is scrutiny or inertia. Oswestry Town Council has made mumbling noises about “inappropriate use” and “cramped conditions,” but appears mostly baffled by the scale and nature of what’s coming.

Local Media: Sleeping Beauty

You’d think this would make news. You’d be wrong.

Oswestry’s local press – ever keen to champion new cafés and pet show results – has shown all the investigative verve of a damp teabag. The Advertizer and the Shropshire Star remains resolutely silent, perhaps too busy rearranging press releases from the council to notice the town being sold out from under its readers.

Meanwhile, the Town Council hums quietly in the background, safe in the knowledge that if they ignore it, perhaps no one will notice. And Shropshire Council? They seem to have gone full remote – in both presence and principle.

Planning in Pyjamas – Powered by Vinted

As for oversight? That’s been outsourced – to home offices, kitchen tables, and apparently side-hustle empires.

According to publicly available information (and proudly declared on social media), at least one

member of Shropshire Council’s Planning Department runs a thriving Vinted shop during working hours. That’s right: while housing applications with far-reaching consequences are being waved through, your case officer might be negotiating the price of a second-hand cardigan.

Maybe that’s why no one’s too bothered about the HMO boom. After all, how much scrutiny can you expect from someone whose professional day includes both local plan reviews and packaging up pre-loved handbags?

A Pattern Worth Noticing

This isn’t just about one building. YPV and SSP-linked companies have followed the same playbook elsewhere: Walsall, Milton Keynes, Cannock, Bridgnorth, Telford. Derelict hotel? Convert to HMO. Mixed-use town centre unit? Cram six people into it. Wrap it in a company no one’s heard of, mortgage it to the hilt, and start the rent roll – preferably backed by housing benefit or, better yet, a Home Office contract for asylum seekers. Ask yourself: why else would developers from three different counties descend on a town like Oswestry?

Locals Need Not Apply

When 6-bed HMOs pop up in tight alleyways (the rear access for Cross Street is via a passage best described as “medieval”), and the occupants are unlikely to be Oswestry residents, it becomes clear that this isn’t development. It’s displacement. The town becomes a dumping ground for overflow populations no one wants to discuss, while the financial beneficiaries hide behind nominee directorships and accountancy smoke.

Final Thoughts

This is not regeneration. It is exploitation disguised as planning. It is what happens when financial opportunists meet bureaucratic passivity. Oswestry is being asset-stripped in plain sight, and the silence of its guardians is deafening.

One HMO at a time. And if you’re wondering who the future residents might be – well, what are the odds they’ll have just come off a boat at Dover, speak little or no English, and be young, single, fit, and with nothing to do? The answer may not surprise you. So to the good people of Oswestry: lock up your daughters.