Shropshire Council - Answers Please? Part 7

Here goes again - we all know that Shropshire Council has no money; they are borrowing money to provide their services. And according to research, all councils have been given ‘additional funding’ to launch their waste food collection service, yet on their own website, Shropshire Council states:

‘Councillors will hear next week that the requirement to provide a weekly food waste collections to all households in the Shropshire Council area from April 2026 is not achievable due to uncertainty over the funding required to deliver the service, and the increased lead time for the new lorries and bins needed.’

Yet another online search tells us that ‘Shropshire Council has been given a total of just over £3.6 million (£3,627,036) in one-off capital funding from the government to launch its weekly waste food collection service.’

So, my first question is 'where is the money?’ Personally, I cannot see the money being put to one side in a high-interest savings account to maybe earn enough interest to make the project viable.

Councillors will hear next week, but will they be told what is happening to the money, will the public be told what is happening to the public money that they have been given. Not so sure myself!

But let’s go back to the first paragraph. Shropshire Council is in debt; everyone knows that. So, when you suggest money-saving options for them, why don’t they try to implement some of them to see if it works, even for small amounts? Don’t forget the saying ‘mighty oaks from little acorns grow.'

I’ll try not to repeat myself too much, but I want to give you another example of wasted money, however small an acorn it is, and I have to go back to road repairs. I don’t know how many teams the council has repairing potholes, but they are doing it wrong. Because we rarely see teams in Shifnal, I assume that they come into town repair a pothole here and there and don’t bother with others, then head off somewhere else. I say this because if they did spend day after day since my last post on this subject, all the potholes in town would have been repaired by now, and they definitely are not.

Travelling around the county for hours each day without repairing anything means money is being wasted; it’s obvious as you are paying people and running vehicles at a cost when nothing is being done. It’s like leaving road signs and cones lying around after the work has been finished, not taking them with you and having to replace them at a cost, but I do believe I covered that one too – oh yeah, see part three in this section.

So, let’s go through a few photos and you will see what I mean:

Yet another repair needing to be carried out on Church Street. I’ve lost count of the times the council have been working down this street!

Even more interesting was seeing the white lines on the pavements, and I will watch with some interest to see what happens, mainly as I walk this road every day! That is because I can’t really see what needs doing here. Remember their own guidelines for pavements is to repair anything with a depth more than 20mm!

And this little white line does intrigue me. Can you please tell me what is wrong with this kerb and piece of the pavement, and please tell me you are not going to carry out repairs here? Because the second photo shows a depth of 2.5 times your own guidelines, which your staff left on Strafford Avenue when you carried out the bodge repairs. Did I ask why we didn’t get nice smooth pavements such as Applebrook and Brimstree, when there were no faults reported and the work didn’t need carrying out?

But let’s go a little further up Church Street

The big white arrow in the photo indicates a traffic roundabout at the top of Church Street, but please note the white-sectioned piece of road; that means repairs need to be carried out at some stage in the future

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And sure enough, there are the repairs that have been carried out, about 100m away from repairs that need carrying out, and a couple of 100m away from others. But in the third photo there is a small pothole starting to appear; why not just use common sense and do that at the same time, you obviously don’t work to your own guidelines, as these photos show. What poor organisation and what a waste of money!

But again, it seems public money doesn’t matter. Who is responsible, and who will stand up to explain the wasted money, or do we need to keep dealing with the faceless council that is Shropshire? The relevant people should be ashamed

Always interested in having a chat if one of your representatives would like to visit Shifnal for a coffee with explanations!

Thanks for reading

DJ