MILE END: THE ASBESTOS ISN’T SECRET.THE MONEY IS.

Part Two: Public land, private answers, and the rather awkward question of what all this has cost.

Part One asked what was being decided behind the closed door. Part Two follows the paper trail beneath Mile End.

In Part One, “Oswestry for Sale: Trust Us, We’re Shropshire Council”, we asked why Cabinet sent the public and press out of the room on 5 August while it approved four undisclosed recommendations concerning the disposal of the Oswestry Sustainable Urban Extension Corner Site. We were not told the valuation, how much land was involved, who wanted it, the marketing process or the commercial terms. The public, as ever, was invited to admire the word “confidential” and resist the vulgar temptation to ask what its own property might be worth.

We ended that article by saying we had decided to find out what lay behind the closed door. We have.

What we found is not a secret asbestos scandal. That would actually be easier for the Council. The asbestos is already in its own records. The much more interesting issue is why Shropshire Council and its wholly owned development company, Cornovii, spent years pursuing housing on land they knew required substantial remediation, why the economics changed when a national retailer appeared, and why the figures that would allow the taxpayer to judge the result remain hidden.

Nine years of doors, and a problem under the ground

The history starts earlier than Cornovii. In September 2017 Shropshire Council Cabinet considered the “Corner Site within Eastern Gateway, Oswestry”, linked in the Council’s own records to “Land at Mile End, Oswestry”. It was considered in private and deferred because of unresolved “technical issues”. We cannot prove those 2017 issues were asbestos, and we will not manufacture a fact merely because it would make a better headline. What we can prove is that the Council was already dealing with this strategic site behind closed doors nine years ago.

The 2017 Cabinet decision record is still publicly accessible.

By March 2022, however, there was no ambiguity about contamination. Cornovii had commissioned georisk Management to prepare a formal Remediation Method Statement and Validation Plan for Shrewsbury Road, Oswestry, Report 21075/2. The later planning report records that investigations had identified “unacceptable risks to human health”, principally from asbestos-containing materials in the ground.

The proposed residential solution was not a ceremonial sprinkling of topsoil. It required a minimum 100mm stone no-dig layer, then 600mm of clean soil in rear gardens and 300mm in front gardens and landscaped areas. In other words, the contamination was known, engineered remediation was designed, and Cornovii continued.

Those details are set out in Shropshire Council’s planning report for application 24/00719/OUT.

A former POW camp, then a residential project

The site formed part of a Second World War prisoner-of-war camp which housed around 2,000 German prisoners. Archaeological work has uncovered the remains of camp buildings and demolition deposits; published archaeological reporting describes pits containing concrete, brick and asbestos. That history does not make development impossible. It does make pretending that contamination arrived unexpectedly rather difficult.

The archaeological background is documented by Wessex Archaeology and in a detailed account in Current World Archaeology / The Past.

Cornovii nevertheless continued with residential development. A residential scheme involving remediation was submitted in 2023 and withdrawn. Further pre-application work followed. Application 24/00719/OUT was then submitted, with an indicative layout of about 89 homes, and outline planning permission was granted by Northern Planning Committee on 17 June 2025. The remediation requirements remained.

There is nothing inherently improper about developing contaminated land. Britain would become rather sparsely inhabited if that were the rule. The public-interest question is different: once the problem was known, what did Cornovii spend making the site work for housing, what remediation cost was built into the viability calculations, and what risk was being carried by a company whose sole shareholder is Shropshire Council?

Then the retailer arrived

By March 2026 the plot had changed. Cornovii’s own Quarter Three monitoring material recorded that approximately £1 million of West Midlands Combined Authority funding had been approved in principle. It also recorded that land-purchase negotiations had begun but were put into abeyance while Shropshire Council explored an offer from a retailer to buy part of the site. Revised layouts were prepared.

That sequence appears in the Housing Supervisory Board public report pack.

Then came the sentence that turns a planning story into a financial one. At the Housing Supervisory Board on 19 March 2026, officers explained that including a retailer on part of the Oswestry site made the scheme more viable because the site was “very contaminated” and retail was better suited because of the differing regulations.

The Council’s own explanation: “very contaminated” – and retail made the scheme more viable.

The wording is in the Council’s own published minutes of 19 March 2026.

So after years spent trying to make housing work on contaminated land, the arrival of a retailer apparently improved viability. Same land. Same asbestos. Different use. Different economics. One can almost hear the contamination breathing a sigh of commercial relief.

The asbestos is not the secret

This is why we are not claiming Cabinet went into private session on 5 August simply to hide the asbestos. That would be daft. Shropshire Council had already published the contamination problem and had discussed its effect on the retail option in public months earlier.

The secret is what the contamination has done to the money.

How much has Cornovii already spent on surveys, consultants, design, planning, viability work and negotiations? What was the estimated residential remediation cost? Was the roughly £1 million of WMCA funding linked in part to abnormal site costs? What value has been placed on the land in its existing contaminated condition? Does the retailer take the land “as is”, or does the taxpayer retain some remediation liability? Has contamination reduced the sale value, and if so by how much?

Those are not allegations. They are basic questions any sensible owner would ask before selling a contaminated development site. Unfortunately the owner in this case is the public, and the public keeps discovering that ownership apparently comes without the tiresome privilege of seeing the accounts.

Same land, different maths. Residential use demanded a significant clean-cover system; the Council later said retail was better suited because of the differing regulations.

Commercial confidentiality meets the public interest

The 5 August decision was taken in private under Paragraph 3 of Schedule 12A to the Local Government Act 1972, covering information about financial or business affairs. Genuine live negotiations can justify confidentiality. Nobody serious disputes that.

But the Council’s own restricted-information notice also records the public-interest test. Secrecy is not supposed to be an automatic reflex simply because money is involved. And the notice itself contains an awkward statutory qualification concerning information relating to proposed development where a local planning authority may grant itself planning permission. We are not declaring the August exemption unlawful; we have not seen the hidden report. We are asking the Monitoring Officer to explain why the balance in this case favours keeping so much from the people who own the asset.

That question becomes sharper because Shropshire Council is not conducting this transaction from a position of comfortable prosperity. It is operating under Exceptional Financial Support and an accelerated asset-disposal programme. The Government approved £71.4 million of support for 2025/26 and £121.4 million for 2026/27. This is not a benevolent gift from Westminster. It is part of a financial recovery mechanism that ultimately lands back on the public balance sheet.

The Council’s Exceptional Financial Support announcement and its Capital Strategy make the financial pressure and the drive for asset disposals plain.

We have found no evidence that central Government ordered Shropshire Council to sell this particular Mile End site. So if somebody wishes to blame “new Labour rules” for this specific disposal, they will need to produce the instruction. Financial pressure is real. A Westminster order to sell Mile End is not, on the evidence currently available.

“Value for money” is easy to invoke. The public-interest test is whether the figures eventually allow the public to verify it.

If the deal is good, prove it

Perhaps every decision here has been commercially sound. Perhaps Cornovii’s expenditure was entirely justified. Perhaps the retailer’s offer solves a difficult contaminated-site problem and delivers excellent value to Shropshire taxpayers. There is a remarkably straightforward way for the Council to establish all three propositions.

When the live negotiations are complete, publish enough information for the public to test them: the valuation basis, the remediation assumptions, the total Cornovii expenditure on the site, the final consideration, the basis on which the purchaser was selected, and the resulting treatment of any public funding already approved in principle.

That is not a demand to publish the retailer’s negotiating tactics while the deal is live. It is a demand that, once the commercial excuse expires, accountability does not mysteriously expire with it.

After the North West Relief Road, Riverside, IP&E, Cornovii and a financial emergency requiring extraordinary Government-backed support, “trust us” is no longer a convincing system of financial governance. It is barely an adequate system for lending somebody a lawnmower.

Shropshire Council has known for years that Mile End was not a simple piece of development land. By 2022 it had a formal asbestos remediation plan. Cornovii still pursued housing. A retailer later changed the viability equation. The Council said so itself. Then the disposal decision returned to the familiar comfort of a closed room.

The asbestos has been in the ground for decades.
The figures should not be buried with it.

If the transaction represents value for money, publication will vindicate the Council. If it refuses to show enough of the arithmetic after the deal is done, the questions will continue. Because the asbestos is not secret. The money is – and until the money is explained, neither are the doubts.

Editorial note: This article raises public-interest questions from published records. It does not allege corruption, unlawful conduct or impropriety by the prospective retailer or any named officer or councillor. Where a figure or motive is not evidenced, it is not presented as fact.

Evidence links: 2017 Cabinet record | planning report 24/00719/OUT | Housing Supervisory Board minutes | March 2026 report pack | 5 August decision record | restricted-information notice | Wessex Archaeology | EFS announcement