Questions raised over Shrewsbury relief road funding

Campaigners against the North West Relief Road (NWRR) in Shrewsbury have sent a letter to Shropshire Council leader Councillor Lezley Picton asking her to clarify the status of £4.2m in funding pledged by the Marches Local Enterprise Fund (LEP).

The funding relates to the Oxon Link Road (OLR), which is now part of the NWRR.

The letter comes after several red lines for triggering the clawback of funds have been crossed in recent months.

Emma Bullard from Better Shrewsbury Transport (BeST) says:

"At the Marches LEP meeting in February, the Board made it very clear that they were concerned about the delays to the Oxon Link Road section of the NWRR. These delays have plagued the project since the LEP pledged £4.2m to fund it back in 2015.

"Six months on from that meeting, Shropshire Council has crashed through all of the red lines the Board laid down. BeST has now written to Councillor Picton asking her to explain why the council has missed these milestones and what it means for the funding.

"Our concern is that the Marches Joint Committee – which is now responsible for millions in funds since the Marches LEP was disbanded earlier this year – is failing to follow through on what was agreed. Given these are public funds, it is imperative that the proper processes are followed."

The letter from BeST to Councillor Picton outlines the concerns expressed at the Marches LEP Board meeting in February 2024, following repeated and very substantial delays to the delivery of the Oxon Link Road (OLR) part of the NWRR project.

Board members recommended that the £4.2m of funding allocated for the project in 2015 would be clawed back if the council didn’t make good progress in the coming months. The letter to Councillor Picton states that this progress hasn’t been made and asks if the new Marches Joint Committee intends to ‘honour the intentions of the Marches LEP by initiating [the agreed] clawback’ as agreed at the February meeting. 

The Marches LEP Board said clawback would be triggered if:

- The outstanding planning conditions for the NWRR were not met by the end of February 2024. 

- A judicial review caused the planning decision to be overturned. 

- The council failed to appoint a contractor by the end of June 2024 and failed to start work by 31 March 2025. 

- The council was unable to confirm that full funding was in place to complete the OLR, as outlined in the original application, by 31 December 2024 (following assessment of tenders and submission of the full business case to the Department for Transport).

Despite the February 2024 deadline, the council has yet to issue a Planning Decision regarding the application for the NWRR, and is still in negotiation with the Environment Agency and Severn Trent Water regarding the pre-commencement planning conditions for the scheme. These are not expected to be completed until early 2025. 

Meanwhile, Shropshire Council has also missed the June 2024 deadline to appoint a contractor, as it is still going through the tendering process on the NWRR. It is understood that the successful contractor now won’t be appointed until December 2024, for a January 2025 start date, seven months later than agreed.

Finally Morris Leisure, which owns the Oxon Caravan Park in Bicton, has publicly stated its intention to seek a Judicial Review of the Planning Committee’s decision as soon as the Decision Letter is issued. Better Shrewsbury Transport has also been crowdfunding to launch its own legal challenge. 

Emma Bullard says:

"It is concerning that £4.2m of public funds have been in deep freeze for almost a decade while the council fails to deliver this promised road. That £4.2m could have been usefully spent in the community for the benefit of all.

"When Hereford Council cancelled its bypass in 2019, funding from the Marches LEP was released to pay for projects like the Shrewsbury Riverside Medical Practice relocation. Sitting on this money for almost ten years while waiting for pigs to fly should raise serious questions.

"Is anyone actually taking responsibility for these millions? Where is the oversight by the administration? What is the legal risk to the Marches Joint Committee of continuing to let this drift?"