Oswestry for Rent: 22 Rooms and No Shame

Sold Out by the Lib Dems
Oswestry for Rent: 22 Rooms and No Shame
Is this town now the HMO Capital of Shropshire?

There was a time—quaint and barely remembered—when The Smithfield Hotel in Oswestry offered weary travellers a soft pillow and a cooked breakfast. Now? It’s about to offer 22 lockable doors, each one a taxpayer-funded bedroom, in a House in Multiple Occupation. That’s application 25/02361/FUL, if you like your town planning with a side of tragedy.

Yes, 22 rooms. Because what Oswestry’s historic town centre really needed was more anonymous bedsits and fewer reasons for tourists to visit.

🏚️ The Lib Dem Housing Doctrine: If It Moves, Convert It

According to the Liberal Democrats’ grand vision, the best use for heritage properties isn’t preservation—it’s partition. Why maintain a historic hotel when you can chop it into rental pods and rename it ‘community housing’?

You see, hotels are expensive. Support services are messy. But HMOs? Now that’s efficient. No overhead, no frills, and no regard for the long-term character of the area.

The Smithfield Hotel isn’t an outlier. It’s a blueprint. Quiet applications, rubber-stamped conversions, and not a whisper of consultation. All blessed under the gospel of ‘compassion’—or as it’s more accurately known in Lib Dem circles: outsourcing the immigration backlog to towns no one in London cares about.

And as for the planners? Judging by recent form, most now moonlight as digital resellers—running their departments off laptops between eBay listings and Vinted sales.

🤝 Reform UK: The Accidental Enabler?

Reform UK, bless their conviction, have taken a bold stand: ban the use of HMOs for housing immigrants in any council they control. It’s populist, principled, and—crucially—popular.

But as with most principled stands in British politics, it has a hilarious side-effect.

By slamming the HMO door shut in Reform-led areas, they’ve turned the spotlight onto Lib Dem and Labour councils, who now find themselves doing the heavy lifting. Not because they want to, you understand, but because there’s no one else left to take the influx. Oswestry’s civic motto might as well be: “We’ll take your overspill, because our council’s policies caused it.”

We might even call it the Reform Relay: run fast enough in the opposite direction and someone else—say, Oswestry—will pick up the migrant baton.

🌀 Absurdity, Looped and Replayed

Let’s follow this madcap policy boomerang:

1. Central Government dumps thousands of migrants on councils under the sacred banner of statutory obligation.
2. Lib Dem-run councils build more HMOs to ‘cope’.
3. Reform bans HMOs in their own backyards.
4. Lib Dem towns like Oswestry become the nation’s accidental refugee reception centre.

And in the end? Everyone still claps themselves on the back and declares victory.

💼 The Gold Rush Nobody Talks About

Let’s not forget the real winners here: property developers such as Bhupinderjit Singh Sidhu or Jassy to his friends, and his planning agents Creative Planning Ltd. While the public debates morality, and politicians posture about “fairness,” the men with spreadsheets are busy converting every viable property into multi-occupancy cash machines.

One planning officer retires, a new one pops up with “urban regeneration” on their CV and a suspicious fondness for converting pubs. Meanwhile, Oswestry transforms from market town to margin town—each flat-pack bedsit another entry on the profit ledger.

🏁 And So, We End Where We Began

The Smithfield Hotel: once a place to celebrate weddings, toast anniversaries, and welcome the world. Now? A holding facility for whoever’s next off the boat, bus, or government placement list. All underwritten by the taxpayer, enabled by the Liberal Democrats, and—quite unintentionally—encouraged by Reform.

Let’s recap:
– Lib Dems gifted the policy.
– Labour nodded along dutifully.
– Reform UK tried to stop it—and accidentally supercharged it somewhere else.

Oswestry’s not just for sale anymore. It’s on clearance.

Next stop? The Wynnstay Hotel. I’m sure there’s a floor plan in draft already—22 rooms, naturally.

📣 Complain Away—He’s *Bound* to Help

Oh, and if any of this strikes you as remotely alarming, disruptive, or just plain stupid—why not let your local councillor know?

May we suggest one Councillor Duncan Kerr—Green Party, Liberal Democrat-adjacent, and an avid supporter of “inclusive community strategies,” including the conversion of hotels into HMOs for transient populations.

He’s your man. After all, he represents the good people of Oswestry South. You’re his constituents. And that’s what councillors are there for, isn’t it?

📧 Email him today (before the Smithfield becomes the prototype for the Wynnstay HMO conversion):
– duncan.kerr@shropshire.gov.uk
– duncan.kerr@greenparty.org.uk

Be polite, of course. After all, he’s probably very busy enabling another round of compassionate displacement.