SHROPSHIRE COUNCIL: DEMOCRACY IS NOT YOURS TO SILENCE

Where transparency is a policy, accountability is a procedure, and inconvenient questions are apparently somebody else’s problem.

There is an increasingly unpleasant smell coming from Shropshire Council, and for once it has nothing to do with the drainage problems at Buttercup View.

It is the unmistakable whiff of an organisation so accustomed to marking its own homework that it now appears to regard anyone demanding to see the answers as an intolerable nuisance. Transparency is enthusiastically advertised, accountability is solemnly promised, and awkward questions are treated rather like unwanted relatives at Christmas. Everybody knows they are there, but nobody wants to open the door.

What began as an investigation into planning, drainage and disputed land at Buttercup View, Mile Bank Road, Whitchurch, has developed into something far more disturbing: an examination of what happens when members of the public challenge the conduct of Shropshire Council itself. The answer, judging by recent correspondence, is a bureaucratic machine considerably more proficient at redirecting scrutiny than responding to it. And what a magnificent machine it is.

The Monitoring Officer and the Disappearing Complaint

On 30 September, I submitted a formal complaint to Shropshire Council’s Monitoring Officer, Richard Phillips, copying Councillors Julian Dean and David Walker. The complaint raised serious concerns about the integrity of official planning records, disputed evidence and the handling of matters brought to the Council’s attention. I expressly requested independent examination rather than another comforting explanation from the department whose conduct was being questioned.

Mr Phillips acknowledged the correspondence and forwarded it to Corporate Complaints. On 16 October, Lead Corporate Complaints Officer Kerry Preece informed me that my complaint could not be accepted because I lived in Oswestry rather than Whitchurch.

There we have it. A question about the integrity of public administration apparently defeated by a postcode.

Perhaps Shropshire Council should introduce a system whereby residents must first establish whether they live within an acceptable radius of suspected administrative failure before troubling its officers. Naturally, there are eligibility rules governing corporate complaints. But the Ombudsman’s guidance also recognises wider public-interest considerations, and the Council has separate arrangements for reporting suspected wrongdoing. I asked whether those routes had been considered.

After all, I was not seeking compensation because somebody had built a house overlooking my begonias. I was questioning whether the Council could substantiate statements contained within its own official planning records. Apparently, that distinction did not prevent the complaint from being dispatched into the administrative wilderness.

Planning Investigates Planning. How Reassuring.

Having declined the complaint, the Council referred the concerns to the Interim Head of Planning and Building Control, Tabitha Lythe, for a response from Planning Services. I had questioned the conduct and documentary records of the planning department and specifically requested independent scrutiny. The Council responded by sending the matter back towards the planning department.

The fox was not merely invited to inspect the henhouse. He was apparently asked to provide the security report.

Predictably, Planning advised that the correct procedures had been followed. Splendid. Everybody can go home. Except the response failed to identify the specific discharge-of-condition records requested to support its assurances concerning visibility splays and third-party land.

That omission matters because in November 2020 a Council highways officer had identified problems involving third-party land affecting plots 67 and 68. The October 2022 planning report subsequently asserted that the necessary visibility could be achieved. Yet, according to the Council’s July 2025 internal review described in our complaint, the supporting documentation could not be located and the original assertion had not been checked against documentary evidence.

An official planning report is supposed to rely upon evidence. The possibility that a material statement was accepted without checking that evidence should concern anyone with even a passing interest in competent public administration. But Shropshire Council appears to have discovered a wonderfully economical alternative to producing documents: declare that the correct procedure was followed and hope the troublesome person asking questions eventually develops another hobby.

And Where Was the Monitoring Officer?

This brings us back to Richard Phillips. The Monitoring Officer is not merely a departmental postbox with a senior salary attached. It is a statutory governance position carrying responsibilities concerning the lawfulness of local authority administration. Forwarding a complaint to Corporate Complaints may satisfy an administrative requirement. It does not, by itself, demonstrate that the wider governance concerns have been independently assessed.

On 16 October, I asked whether the Council had considered its public whistleblowing arrangements, whether original electronic planning records had been preserved and what mechanism would independently examine the allegations. The correspondence available to us has yet to provide a substantive explanation of that separate assessment. Perhaps somebody should explain whether the Council’s governance machinery exists to examine serious concerns or merely to ensure they are filed in the correct department before being returned to sender.

The Other Citizen Who Asked the Wrong Question

While my correspondence was enjoying its guided tour of the Council’s internal procedures, Justin Reynolds was pursuing an entirely separate matter. He submitted a public question for the Northern Planning Committee meeting scheduled for 20 October, concerning serious issues at Buttercup View and whether consideration should be given to referral to an external statutory authority.

The question was rejected. Committee Officer Tim Ward explained that it might require confidential information and related to the determination of a planning application. Justin challenged the decision, pointing out that questioning the Council’s historical handling of governance concerns was not the same as asking councillors to overturn planning permission. He offered a revised question.

The Council’s Constitution does contain restrictions on certain planning-related questions. Whether those restrictions properly justify rejection of this particular governance question is precisely what Justin has asked the authority to explain. Shropshire Council regularly expresses enthusiasm for public participation, produces reports about openness and encourages residents to become involved. Then somebody arrives with documentary evidence and an uncomfortable question. Suddenly the constitutional rulebook becomes the most popular publication in the building.

My complaint and Justin’s question are entirely separate. They involve different procedures and different decisions. Yet together they expose the same uncomfortable possibility: the Council’s arrangements are better at regulating public scrutiny than demonstrating how the concerns raised will be independently addressed.

They Knew. What Happened Next?

On 1 September 2025, Councillor Julian Dean, Chair of the Northern Planning Committee, circulated an email raising concerns about disputed land, drainage, Welsh Water and potential reputational damage to the Council’s planning function. He considered that the issues needed resolving before the relevant planning application was determined. The correspondence establishes that significant concerns had reached a senior elected representative.

What did they do after they knew?

There should be a documentary answer. A public authority making decisions affecting property, infrastructure and the environment ought to be able to show how such concerns were examined and resolved. Instead, we have encountered complaints procedures, departmental referrals and restrictions on public questions. It is almost as though the Council has mistaken the management of correspondence for the management of accountability.

The Arrogance of Untouchable Government

An institution that becomes accustomed to defending its procedures rather than examining their failures risks developing a culture in which accountability is viewed as an irritation and public scrutiny as an intrusion. Such a culture does not require a grand conspiracy. It merely requires sufficient people to accept that established practice must be correct because it is established practice. Eventually, the organisation becomes more interested in protecting its reputation than explaining its decisions.

Councillors are not employed to provide decorative legitimacy to whatever assurances emerge from the officer hierarchy. They are elected to exercise judgement, provide oversight and represent the public interest. The Council’s political leadership should be insisting upon clarity about how these concerns are handled, not leaving residents to discover which departmental door is currently closed.

Shropshire Council, Remember Who Works for Whom

Let us dispense with the polite fiction that another procedural explanation will settle this matter. Shropshire Council, you are not a private club. Your officers are not untouchable, your councillors are not above public scrutiny, and your Monitoring Officer’s responsibilities cannot be measured solely by the efficiency with which difficult correspondence is forwarded elsewhere.

You are public servants exercising powers entrusted to you by law. Those powers carry obligations which do not vanish because a question is inconvenient or the person asking it lives in the wrong town. Your Constitution is not a protective wall behind which the public interest can be abandoned, and your complaints procedure is not a machine for converting serious governance concerns into somebody else’s problem.

We are not impressed by official assurances unsupported by the documents required to test them, nor by the administrative sophistication with which responsibility circulates around the Council without ever finding somewhere to settle. You may control your committee agendas and administer your complaints procedures, but you do not own the truth, and you cannot extinguish legitimate scrutiny by refusing to hear a question.

The Alternative Council will continue examining the evidence and pursuing the answers, however many departmental corridors the correspondence is required to traverse. Democracy is not a favour dispensed to suitably qualified residents who promise not to ask anything embarrassing. It is the foundation of the authority you exercise.

And if Shropshire Council has become so comfortable with its own power that it needs reminding who it works for, then the problem is no longer simply what happened at Buttercup View. The problem is a council whose machinery of accountability appears increasingly determined to protect itself from the very people it exists to serve.

And one final reminder to everyone working within Shropshire Council: “I was only following orders” is not a universal defence. Neither is “I was only following procedure.” Personal responsibility does not disappear simply because somebody higher up the bureaucratic ladder told you what to do.

THE ALTERNATIVE COUNCIL

Truth, Transparency and Tenacity — For Those Tired of the Silence.

Silence is not neutrality. It’s complicity.

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@thealternativecouncil