Every council has meetings.Some have strategies.Some have visions.A few even have plans. What they are supposed to have, particularly when tens of millions of pounds of public borrowing are involved, is a clear understanding of risk. Recently, a Freedom of Information request asked Shropshire Council to produce exactly that: the documentation showing its financial exposureContinue reading “Cornovii: The Risk Nobody Can Quite Find”
Tag Archives: news
WHEN TRANSPARENCY MEETS REALITY
THE NIGHT OSWESTRY TOWN COUNCIL FORGOT ITS OWN HISTORY There are council meetings that drift quietly into obscurity, preserved only in minutes nobody reads and archived somewhere between ‘apologies received’ and ‘any other business’. And then there are meetings that accidentally reveal how power behaves when it assumes nobody important is watching. The latest OswestryContinue reading “WHEN TRANSPARENCY MEETS REALITY”
Transparency at the Local Council
Now With Added Devolution, Fewer Services, and Even Less Memory Local councils are, we are endlessly assured, champions of transparency. This is said often, confidently, and usually just after something significant has happened without anyone quite noticing. Transparency, in the modern council sense, does not mean visibility. That would invite questions. Instead, it means thatContinue reading “Transparency at the Local Council”
Shropshire Council’s Financial Strategy: How to Look Solvent While Running Out of Road
The Calm Voice at the Edge of the Cliff There is a particular tone councils adopt when the numbers stop adding up. It is not panic.It is not honesty.It is reassurance. Shropshire Council’s Financial Strategy for 2026–31 is written in that tone. Calm. Managerial. Responsible. The kind of document that wants you to feel thatContinue reading “Shropshire Council’s Financial Strategy: How to Look Solvent While Running Out of Road”
WHEN THE ARCHITECTS LEAVE AND THE BILL IS SENT TO OSWESTRY
There is a pattern emerging in Shropshire that is now too obvious to ignore. Senior officers design risk.Senior officers depart.Residents are handed the invoice — repackaged as “local choice”. Last week, Miranda Garrard, Head of Legal and Democratic Services at Shropshire Council, became the fourth very senior officer to leave suddenly. Her farewell statement spokeContinue reading “WHEN THE ARCHITECTS LEAVE AND THE BILL IS SENT TO OSWESTRY”
£195 Million, No One Responsible: How Shropshire Council Learned to Forget
Yesterday, Shropshire Council finally said the number out loud. £195 million. A four-year funding gap so large it should have triggered resignations, emergency scrutiny, and a public explanation of who authorised what. Instead, residents were offered spreadsheets, inevitability, and silence. Still no meaningful mention of Cornovii Developments Ltd.Still no ownership.Still no accountability. Then came theContinue reading “£195 Million, No One Responsible: How Shropshire Council Learned to Forget”
Property Development for Beginners (By People Who Won’t Pay the Bill)
Cornovii in 60 seconds • Shropshire Council owns Cornovii• Shropshire Council lends it money• Those loans are secured on public land• If Cornovii fails, the Council is on the hook• The taxpayer ultimately carries the risk We ask why that arrangement is still described as “arm’s length”. They call it “commercial”.They call it “arm’s length”.Continue reading “Property Development for Beginners (By People Who Won’t Pay the Bill)”
Smile, Pay, Be Quiet
The Lib Dem Art of Hypocrisy: When Residents Speak and Power Laughs Written in another age, but uncomfortably familiar today: We hear men speaking for us of new laws strong and sweet,Yet is there no man speaketh as we speak in the street.It may be we shall rise the last as Frenchmen rose the first,OurContinue reading “Smile, Pay, Be Quiet”
The Cowards of the County
Devolution: How Responsibility Was Abandoned, Bills Were Exported, and Accountability Quietly Abstained Devolution, in theory, is about local empowerment.In Shropshire, it has become something else entirely: the systematic off‑loading of cost, risk, and responsibility from a failing unitary authority onto the smallest, least‑resourced tier of local government — and ultimately onto residents. Let us beContinue reading “The Cowards of the County”
When the Money Ran Out: A Tale of Two Councils (and One Missing Opposition)
There are only two honest ways to respond to a financial crisis. You either take less yourself — or you become very clever indeed. Shropshire Council has tried both. Just not at the same time. 2011: When Councillors Went First At a full meeting of Shropshire Council in January 2011, during the early austerity period,Continue reading “When the Money Ran Out: A Tale of Two Councils (and One Missing Opposition)”
The Alternative Council 