How the Lib Dems Turned a Market Town into a Migrant Hostel
Once upon a time, Oswestry was a market town—now it’s a market brand, traded like a cheap stock among absentee landlords and watched over by a Liberal Democrat hierarchy so detached you’d think they were governing by astral projection.
We used to be known for our independent shops, our borderland charm, and yes, our stubborn streak. Now we’re famous for 22-room sardine tins, shady planning approvals, and a council tax bill that might just be underwriting DJ lessons for Dover’s latest arrivals.
🌈 Pot of Gold: Britain’s Great Yellow Brick Road for the Newly Arrived
Across Britain, and yes—including our own dear Shropshire—councils are outdoing each other in taxpayer-funded “welcome packs” for migrants, asylum seekers, and those yet to clarify their status. Forget housing locals—try funding the following instead:
– DJ lessons – because what the world really needs is more sets at refugee raves.
– Yoga classes – inner peace subsidised by outer rage from ratepayers.
– Driving theory tests – even if the only thing being driven is public patience.
– Football tickets, bowling trips, PlayStations – because nothing says “trauma recovery” like a FIFA tournament on a flat screen paid for by pensioners.
– Circus skills – honestly, how else to prepare someone for navigating Shropshire Council’s planning portal?
Yes, more than £141 million of council spending since 2022, with neighbouring Staffordshire County Council splashing £18,000 on driver tuition and others (including West Sussex and Kent) gleefully funding yoga, shopping sprees, and console gaming. All while your bins go uncollected and social housing lists swell longer than Duncan Kerr’s excuses.
🏗️ The HMO Tsunami: 22 Rooms, No Shame, No Locals
While Shropshire Council quietly rolls out countryside walks and library schemes for “culturally enriching activities,” developers are plundering our housing stock, converting churches, pubs and family homes into densely packed HMOs—perfect for transient populations, less so for building community.
– The Hope Church conversion? 22 bedrooms. Approved.
– The Cross Street application? Crammed through the side door of a dirty alleyway. Another 6 bedrooms. And the pièce de résistance?:
– The Smithfield Hotel? Practically a case study in how to rezone hospitality into HMO hell.
– 55 Beatrice Street? No application yet, but owned by a convicted fraudster.
🏛️ Shropshire Council’s Department for HMO Conversion and Civic Evasion
If they can’t solve it, they’ll commission a task force to discuss forming a committee to ignore it.
Meet Councillor Heather Kidd, the new Leader of Shropshire Council.
Alongside Heather Kidd in this grand performance of administrative theatre, we find – Councillor James Owen, Cabinet Member for Housing and Leisure. two wildly incompatible portfolios yoked together like a Victorian farce.
On the one hand, he oversees a housing crisis so severe that family homes are vanishing faster than FOI responses, and on the other, he’s entrusted with ensuring we all enjoy a good swim while Oswestry drowns in HMOs. A man for all seasons—and none of the answers.
– Councillor David Vasner Cabinet Member for Highways and the Environment.
And then, standing heroically at the crossroads of pothole diplomacy and eco-piety, we have Councillor David Vasmer, Cabinet Member for Highways and the Environment.
A champion of “green values,” he has somehow presided over the slow death of Shropshire’s roads, turning every journey into a suspension test and every verge into a wildflower experiment. Under his watch, it’s unclear whether we’re trialing re-wilding or just not bothering. But at least it’s being done with environmental sensitivity—and zero urgency. While these officials pledge to protect heritage and community, they rubber-stamp HMOs so rapidly you’d think the application forms came pre-signed.
🏛️ Oswestry Town Council: Where Accountability Goes to Die
Let us not forget:
– Mayor Rosie Radford – silent on the HMO scandal.
– Councillor Duncan Kerr – oddly muted
– Councillor Jay Moore – once said “if we fail, we’re gone.”
Well Jay, your party has failed spectacularly, and yet here you remain—unbothered, unrepentant, and seemingly unaware that your political obituary may be a blog post away.
Oh! I almost forgot, he once said if the “Puddle in the Park” did not happen; he would resign.
Well, he’s still with us! He’s like a Starmer in Lib Dem clothes—minus the charisma, minus the conviction, but blessed with the same gift for inaction.
Just don’t ask him to jump in the puddle. He might get his principles wet.
🎭 The Circus Comes Full Circle
As Oswestry becomes a staging post for asylum processing and a goldmine for absentee landlords, your elected officials are busy hosting craft days or lobbying DEFRA about cow emissions.
And as the electorate watches in disbelief, Lib Dem leaders pose for Shropshire Star photo ops in front of community noticeboards that now list more HMO conversions than town fetes.
🔔 A Call to Arms (or at Least to Email)
To the people of Oswestry: demand more. Demand that:
– All HMO applications be halted pending full public consultation;
– An Article 4 Direction be issued for Oswestry, immediately;
– And that the Lib Dem majority in Oswestry and Shropshire stop hiding behind platitudes and start defending this community.
Because if we don’t push back, the next “To Let” sign you see may not be in English—and it certainly won’t be affordable.
🗣️ MP on Mute?
And what of Helen Morgan MP?
She finds time to question potholes, sewage, and broadband in Parliament and anyother photo opportunity—but not the erosion of housing rights on her own patch?
Perhaps she’s unaware. Or perhaps, like some of her colleagues, she’s decided that landlord votes speak louder than local voices.
Either way, it’s time she answered a simple question: Will she raise the Oswestry HMO crisis in the House—or not?
⚠️ Councillor Alert
A final note to our local elected representatives:
This is your warning.
In the next instalment, any councillor—town or county—who continues to dodge, deflect, or disappear on the HMO issue will be formally introduced to the public.
By name.
With commentary.
Moral fibre is no longer optional. Courage is no longer negotiable. Your silence is not neutrality—it’s complicity.
You ran for office. You asked for responsibility. Now wear it—or prepare to be worn down by public scrutiny.
Oswestry isn’t just for lease—it’s being leased out from under you. Time to change the locks.
The Alternative Council 