Oswestry: Where Accountability Goes to Melt

The Great Oswestry Giveaway: When Scrutiny Left the Building

In Oswestry, transparency isn’t so much a policy as a parlour trick. Ask a question, and the Council disappears behind the curtain in a puff of procedural smoke. Take my own letter to the Mayor, dated 7 October 2025, Letter to Mayor setting out very real conflicts of interest and potential breaches of grant conditions involving two properties at 10 Smithfield Road and 20 Church Street. Weeks later, the only reply I’ve received is from the echo in my inbox.

Perhaps the Mayor is simply too occupied. After all, public service is demanding work — particularly when close working relationships require such delicate handling. But one can’t help wondering whether the silence speaks volumes.

While that correspondence gathers dust, so too do several of the “revitalised” properties funded by Oswestry’s ever-generous grant schemes. The Breathing New Life programme, it seems, can breathe new life into almost anything — except accountability.

🎬 Missing Equipment, Missing Explanations

Among the Council’s many mysteries, the cinema projector remains the most illuminating — mainly because it’s vanished. Purchased under the Market Towns Revitalisation Programme (the gift that keeps on giving), the £50,000 Digital Cinema Initiative-compliant projector was meant to belong to the people of Oswestry. It was a tangible legacy — public investment in culture, community, and the magic of film.

Except now, nobody seems to know where it is. It doesn’t appear on the Council’s asset register; no one can produce a transfer record, and every request for information vanishes faster than popcorn at a matinée. For a piece of equipment designed to project light, it has certainly cast a long shadow.

And still, no explanation. Not from the Clerk, not from the Mayor, and not from the sole surviving member of the once-verdant eco-bloc — Councillor Duncan Kerr, the only Green left in the village. His former Green Party colleagues have faded into the background, replaced by a Liberal Democrat majority that promised change but delivered only a new colour scheme. Different logo, same fog.

🚴 The Bike of Three Wheels Rides Again

No sequel to Grants, Ghosts and Governance would be complete without a cameo from The Bike of Three Wheels. That eco-tricycle, born of a £30,000 grant and followed by another £14,000 helping from the civic cake, remains a monument to Oswestry’s gift for giving. The Shropshire Cycle Hub not only retained ownership of the “bike” but later closed its Shrewsbury branch, leaving Oswestry as its only outlet. Rumour now has it that the building lease — a tidy £25,000 a year — is being quietly reassigned by the Council’s letting agents. Due diligence, as ever, remains an optional extra.

🍦 The Ice-Cream Contract Fiasco

While the Council happily churns out press releases, here’s one that melted under scrutiny. For nine years, Scoopalicious served families in Cae Glas Park — a small local success story. Then came the Council’s tendering process, which ousted the home-grown vendor in favour of an external operator reportedly offering a “sponsorship” of £12,000 — a requirement the incumbent traders say was never mentioned in the brief.

Over 1,100 residents signed a petition to reverse the decision, but the Council stood firm, citing “procedure.” Another case study in how local enterprise loses out when process overtakes principle. If you listen closely, you can still hear the hollow ring of supporting local business echoing around the Guildhall — somewhere between the missing projector and the missing accountability.

💦 The Puddle, the Projects and the Perpetual Excuse

There was the £3,000 consultancy fee for the ill-fated “Puddle in the Park” — a project so visionary it ended up in the wrong place entirely. Once the consultant was paid, it was discovered that Severn Trent’s water charges would cost more than the puddle itself. You might laugh if you weren’t paying for it.

And then came the Breathing New Life grants — café reopenings that closed again, refurbishments that quietly reverted to “To Let” signs, and the sort of record-keeping that would make even the most patient auditor weep.

💸 The Vanishing Act

From puddles that evaporate to projectors that vanish, Oswestry’s civic accounting resembles a conjuring show with an unlimited budget. Public money goes in; explanations don’t come out.

Through it all, the Mayor maintains a silence so profound it could be bottled and sold as a relaxation aid. Transparency, in Oswestry, is now a spectator sport. The Council’s renowned CCTV system still watches the streets, but never the corridors where accountability goes missing. The cameras see everything — except the things that matter.

📖 The Book of Knobs: Nominations Now Open

This instalment will, inevitably, find its place in The Book of Knobs — the ongoing chronicle of local government at its most gloriously self-deluded. As the next chapter takes shape, nominations are open. Which episodes of civic farce, fiscal fog, or procedural pantomime deserve a starring role? The ice-cream contract? The tricycle that time forgot? The cinema that lost its own projector? Oswestry’s Great Giveaway continues — and the least we can do is write it down before it disappears again.

🗝️ The Keeper of the Keys (and the Shredder)

Every conjuring act needs a stage manager, and in Oswestry that role belongs to the Town Clerk. Theoretically, he exists to uphold due process — the neutral guardian of governance, the voice of legal and procedural sanity. In practice, he functions more as the Council’s firewall: absorbing the heat, deflecting the questions, and ensuring that awkward truths go to die quietly in an inbox.

When asked about Mr Clough’s alleged conflict of interest — the Council’s Markets and Events Officer whose partner jointly owns businesses that received grants — the Clerk offered the following:

“The decisions on the grants were made by Council in line with the eligibility criteria and are a matter of public record.”

It was an answer only a bureaucrat could love: polite, circular, and utterly devoid of substance.

The Clerk did not clarify whether Mr Clough declared his interests, recused himself from any part of the process, or whether any due diligence was actually conducted. In effect, the Town Clerk’s response confirmed that a decision had been made — not that it was made properly.

Without a Town Clerk like this, this blog might never have been written — because there’d be nothing to expose. As it stands, his silence sustains a culture where accountability is treated as a PR inconvenience.

The Town Clerk’s job is to uphold transparency. In Oswestry, it’s to absorb it.

My nomination for inclusion in the Book of Knobs is the Clerk of Oswestry Town Council.

Next HMO? – Watch this space.

Because in Oswestry, there’s always another mystery waiting for its grant.