Many people have asked me what extra spending by Oswestry Town Council could possibly justify a 39% rise in the precept

and whether the 6 Councillors who aren’t Lib Dems supported them so I’ve tried to explain it here. You can look at the papers for the meeting on the 14th January on the Town Council’s website. The total increase in spending is over £410,000 the new spending comes from the following:

1. An extra £210,000 for taking over maintenance of the parks owned by Shropshire Council in the town. Currently Shropshire Council does this at a cost of £72,000. Why will it cost Oswestry so much more? Well it’s because a small town doesn’t have the depots, staff or economies of scale you can achieve in a Shropshire wide contract.
2. An extra £30,000 for a “Movement strategy”. It could be a lot more, we have no quotes. You’ve seen the issues outside Shrewsbury station – that came from their movement strategy which cost Shrewsbury over £420,000 to write. We do need investment in walking and cycling and Shropshire made a separate plan for this in 2024. It has a whole chapter on Oswestry and the town features highly in the list of priority projects. The Green and Independent Councillors thought it would be better to spend £40,000 capital (which won’t affect the Council tax) on delivering a project rather than £30,000 on consulting on and writing another plan.
3. An extra £10,000 for two pods for the homeless. The Green and Independent Councillors all support this, it is something many Councillors have been working on. But there are a lot of safeguarding and management issues to overcome. We don’t yet have a business case, plan or even a site so the money requested may not be enough.
4. An extra £25,000 for the Foodbank. Over the past four years Green Councillors have always supported the Foodbank (indeed I cycled from Lands End to John O’Groats to rase money for them). We not only support this but proposed a new group to improve communications and services for those in need, which we fear will increase as a result of rising bills.
5. An extra £25,000 to give to Shropshire Council for the library. If Shropshire Council wants to change the hours or days the library operates it has to consult. There has been no such consultation and if Shropshire gets the money it has asked for from Government there is no reason to think it will need to make any changes. We should not be taxing people on hunches but on evidence.
6. An extra £20,000 to pay for the Town Council to adopt street-lights provided by new developers or managed by Shropshire Council. The Councillor who made this suggestion described it himself as a barmy idea and it is. Housing developers try to cut costs by not contracting with Shropshire Council to manage the lights they provide on new estates, their shareholders will be delighted if the Town Council takes them all off their hands at the tax-payers expense.
7. The budget put forward by the Green and Independent group did propose re-surfacing the tennis courts in Cae Glas and providing some more fitness or sports equipment there (which would also come from Capital) along with a small reduction in the charges for the outdoor market as part of a project to rejuvenate this which would have cost £3,000 at most. Both these sensible and modest proposals were rejected by the Lib Dems.

Oswestry is not a wealthy town and its people are facing a cost of living crisis and now a large rise in car parking fees, huge increase in the Town Council precept and the possibility of Shropshire Council being allowed to impose a large increase in its share of the Council tax. Other Town Councils like Whitchurch and Ellesmere are only imposing a 5% rise in their precept. Many of the measures that are driving the increase in the Town Council precept and intended to help Shropshire Council, who are spending more than they receive in income. However they are asking to borrow an eye-watering £130M next year to avoid effectively going bankrupt. The money that the Town Council manages or can raise is a drop in the ocean by comparison. Other Town Councils like Bridgewater in Somerset had the same idea a few years ago. It has resulted in the town precept going up by 400% and still not solved Somerset’s problem.

In Oswestry the budget just set will take £1.2million out of the pockets of local people in the three years left of the current Council. That will have a noticeable effect on discretionary spend in the town that our local businesses rely on.