Oswestry21

The following letter appeared in the Advertizer this week written by George Miller, whose permission we have sought to include it here. It points out not only a local and topical concern around retail planning matters, but the issue of where democracy begins to cease to be democratic once decision making processes end up in the hands of too few people at too many levels of bureaucracy and control.

 “Whatever your politics the results of the recent Unitary Council elections have been bad for Oswestry. Three of the four councillors elected for Oswestry town are also members of the Town Council. As I understand it, because the Town Council is a landowner and interested party in development plans for Oswestry, these three would not be able to take part in the decision making process. The interests of Oswestry people would be represented by only one councillor, who, as it happens, does not live in the town.

It would surely be the right and proper thing now for the three joint councillors to resign from the Town Council. This would allow them to devote their full energies to the Unitary Council and representing our interests on it. It would also create vacancies for new faces, talent and ideas in the Town Council.”

So we have Keith Barrow, Bill Benyon, Martin Bennett and Vince Hunt heading off to the Shirehall to represent Oswestry at county level. All Conservatives, members of a party that makes all the right noises about decentralisation of power, but seemingly keen to flock to the central plughole of public voice and influence and unlikely to lobby for a return to representing their electorate on a more usefully local and less prestigious platform anytime soon.

As with national government, so with regional government -  transparency in public duty, local engagement and availability, an ability to listen to genuine concerns at town level and lobby appropriately at county level, and an acknowledgment that this role is as temporary servants of the town rather than it’s masters would all make a useful start to town relationship with it’s elected representatives in Shrewsbury.

While this move to centralisation has, in effect, made it harder for the public to attend and engage in council activity than it was when they were able to stroll up to the old Borough Council Offices, there are members of the Oswestry electorate interested and motivated enough to see their representatives at Shirehall and to attend meetings to ensure that, as so often happens when process is centralised, local issues are not belittled, ignored or decided without sufficient consultation and transparency.

We wish them all well in their new posts, and look forward to engaging in dialogue with them in this new, somewhat more distanced context.

Today sees the transition from the Borough Councils to Unitary…….. Oswestry being the largest market town of the five in North Shropshire - Ellesmere, Wem, Whitchurch, Market Drayton and Oswestry. North Shropshire Unitary will regionally be under the control of the new county wide Shropshire Council.We are promised better services at less cost - we are also guaranteed greater centralisation and a threatened erosion of local democracy and voice.

Today also is - April to April - the first anniversary of this website. I don’t think that the two are unrelated. In recent years, Britain has witnessed an alarming degree of centralisation, an increasing government distrust of the populace, a decline in the perceived importance of local voice and a worrying (and unsurprising in the circumstances) rise in political apathy among the young and the population in general.

As the inexorable move to centralisation takes place - whether for financial or ideological reasons -  it inevitably leaves empty space behind it where groups with either local or global concerns who feel that their voices are unlikely to be heard, will naturally mobilise and coalesce - like plants that colonise a cleared area of land. Nature abhors a vacuum - in politics as in the natural environment. The internet has made this easier than it once was.

Change can be achieved through the growth of grass roots and local opinion. Particularly if those small groups form links and connections over the concerns they they have in common. And this is what will have to happen at regional level in the Unitary Authority - we will no longer be heard as “Oswestry”, but as part of North Shropshire Unitary, and whatever particular interests groups have, those groups will be better heard by engaging in dialogue with the other towns in North Shropshire, and, while representing the unique qualities of each of those towns, also present the collective concerns of the new North Shropshire Unitary upwards to county level.

We heard this afternoon, 11th March, that the planning applications currently lodged with Oswestry Borough Council will not now be dealt with by OBC Special Development Control Committee on the 25th March, but will be passed onto the new Unitary Authority, North Shropshire.

This was always on the cards, along with the option that they would actually make a positive decision in favour of one of the applications, or that they would bin one of them and pass it on. It seems that unresolved traffic issues in the three current applications and the imminent announcement of the Central Car Park bid mean that the window of opportunity has closed for a March decision.

Pity that they didn’t find it possible to sit and just make the sane and simple call to bin the grossly inappropriate and outdated Smithfield out-of-town scheme before passing it on. 

More to follow as news comes in.