Campaign group Better Shrewsbury Transport (BeST) has written an open letter to Angela Rayner, the deputy prime minister, asking her to ‘claw back’ £4.2m of Marches Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) funding for the controversial North West Relief Road.
It comes as Shropshire Council is accused of breaching key red lines on the project’s delivery timing, raising fresh headaches for the beleaguered council project.
In 2015 the Marches LEP pledged £4.2m towards the Oxon Link Road (OLR). In 2020 the OLR was rolled into the controversial and much-delayed North West Relief Road (NWRR) project. The LEP cash became part of the NWRR’s funding package.
However, the Marches LEP was frustrated by the lack of progress on the NWRR. The £4.2m funding – which has remained unspent for almost a decade – was discussed at a Marches LEP board meeting in February 2024, where members of the LEP board threatened to trigger ‘clawback’ of the funds unless the NWRR kept to a timely schedule.
Following the meeting, the LEP and Shropshire Council agreed on a series of milestones for the NWRR project to ensure it remained on track.
It was agreed that clawback would be triggered if:
– The outstanding planning conditions for the NWRR were not met by the end of February 2024. UPDATE: the project is due to return to the Northern Planning Committee for consideration of the new carbon impact assessment report in January 2025. Shropshire Council’s planning portal now lists the project as ‘Recommendation and/ or Committee’ rather than ‘Decided’.
– The council failed to appoint a contractor by the end of May 2024 and failed to start work by 31 March 2025. UPDATE: The Full Business Case isn’t expected to be considered by the council until the new year and DfT has said it needs at least three months to consider this – making a March 2025 start date impossible.
– By 31 December 2024, following assessment of tenders and submission of the full business case to the Department for Transport (DfT) the Council is unable to confirm that the full funding is in place to complete OLR as outlined in the original application. UPDATE: An external audit recently criticised Shropshire Council for not having a robust funding plan in place to fill the gap between the agreed funding (including the at risk £4.2M) and the current £178M price tag. No robust funding plan has yet been presented by the council in response.
– A judicial review caused the planning decision to be overturned. UPDATE: Two judicial review applications are currently being considered, one by a local business (Morris Leisure) and the other by Better Shrewsbury Transport. These are on hold until the Planning Decision letter is issued.
Letter from outlines the present situation
The letter from campaigners outlines the present situation and asks the Deputy PM – who heads the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government – ‘to urgently investigate why clawback has not yet occurred’ given that these milestones have been breached.
Campaigner Mike Streetly says:
“It really isn’t appropriate for £4.2m in public funds to be left in limbo for a decade just because Shropshire Council has been unable to get its act together and build this doomed road. Following the dissolution of the Marches LEP in March 2024, there appears to be no active oversight in place and no public accountability for the continued delays.
“Responsibility for the £4.2m was given to the Marches Enterprise Partnership Joint Committee, which has board members from Shropshire, Hereford and Telford and Wrekin Councils. However, the committee has only had one 22 minute meeting on 7 March 2024 and there has been no proper response from the committee to our public queries. All subsequent committee meetings have been cancelled. Who is in charge here?”
BeST’s questions emerge after Shropshire Council’s Executive Director of Place, Mark Barrow, takes voluntary redundancy from the council. Mr Barrow led the NWRR project and was part of the committee overseeing the £4.2m as the ‘Responsible Officer’.
The campaigners’ letter states it is not clear what mechanisms were put in place to ensure that the apparent conflict of interest between the administration of the £4.2m LEP grant to the OLR and Mr Barrow’s role as senior officer in charge of delivery of the project was adequately managed. Equally, it is not clear who is the ‘Responsible Officer’ now that Mr Barrow has left Shropshire Council by ‘mutual agreement’.
Says Mike Streetly:
“As local residents watching our local infrastructure crumble and seeing services being slashed after years of Conservative mismanagement of public finances, we are very keen to see the £4.2m spent in ways that benefit the people of Shropshire more directly.
“The North West Relief Road has clearly run out of road. The concern now is how much damage it does as it implodes. This doomed project has the potential to completely bankrupt Shropshire Council, which is why we are asking the grownups to step in. The Deputy Prime Minister needs to look into this matter, quickly.”
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