Buried quietly on the Council website, published days before a Cabinet meeting and largely unread by the public, sit two documents that matter more than almost anything else Shropshire Council will consider this year:
• The Draft Medium Term Financial Plan 2026/27–2030/31
• The accompanying Capital Strategy
These are not background papers.
They are the blueprint.
Once approved, they become the assumptions that govern every service cut, every asset sale, and every “difficult decision” councillors will later claim was unavoidable.
Which makes now — before Cabinet votes — the moment when questions still matter.
Here are three that deserve answers before the papers are waved through.
1. What Has Quietly Got Worse Since the Last Plan?
The language of the Draft MTFS is calm, professional and reassuring. It speaks of pressures being “managed”, risks being “mitigated”, and savings being “identified”.
What it does not do — at least not plainly — is spell out where the position has deteriorated since the previous strategy.
Are demand pressures higher than forecast?
Have savings slipped or been reprofiled?
Have risks moved from “possible” to “likely”?
Councillors are being asked to approve a forward plan without a clear, honest comparison to the last one.
If things have worsened, they should be told — plainly — before they vote, not afterwards when the consequences arrive.
2. Which Assumptions Are Doing the Heavy Lifting?
Financial strategies rarely fail because of what they say openly.
They fail because of what they quietly assume.
This draft plan assumes:
• that savings can be delivered on time;
• that transformation will land as planned;
• that demand can be moderated;
• and that capital decisions will proceed smoothly.
But where is the stress-testing?
What happens if savings slip?
What happens if demand rises faster than expected?
What happens if asset disposals underperform, or borrowing costs rise?
Optimism is not a strategy.
It is a risk — and one councillors should consciously choose, not inherit by default.
3. What Isn’t Being Said at All?
Sometimes the most important signal in a financial strategy is not what is included, but what barely features.
Major capital exposures, subsidiary risks, and long-tail liabilities can sit offstage while the spotlight remains on day-to-day pressures.
If Cabinet members cannot clearly point to where group-wide risks sit in this strategy — and how they are being monitored, mitigated and reported — then they are approving a plan with blind spots.
Blind spots are how councils drift into crisis.
Why This Matters Now
Once Cabinet approves these papers, the narrative hardens.
Future budget cuts will be described as “already agreed”.
Difficult decisions will be framed as “baked into the strategy”.
Responsibility will dissolve into process.
That is why scrutiny before approval matters more than criticism after the fact.
No one is accusing Cabinet of bad faith.
But good faith is not enough.
Councillors are being asked to sign their names to assumptions that will shape Shropshire’s finances for years to come.
Before they do, residents are entitled to know whether the questions were asked — and whether the answers were good enough.
Because tomorrow’s vote will not just approve a document. It will approve a story about where the money went, why it ran out, and who was paying attention when it still mattered.
And still, there is no substantive mention of Cornovii Developments Ltd — a council-owned developer with significant capital exposure — in a document supposedly designed to explain where the Council’s financial risks lie.
The Alternative Council 