Public Conveniences – Are they Fit for Purpose?

Being born and bred in Shrewsbury I know and speak to many local residents every day, and one of the most regular topics to come up is the state of Shrewsbury’s public conveniences. A good range of well presented and maintained public toilets is a key part of any enjoyable visit to our town centre. Sadly the position is not all it should be.

Regularly I am told the standard of equipment and presentation is below what our residents and visitors have a right to expect.  The image of Shrewsbury they portray to visitors is one of not caring  whether they have a comfortable and  relaxed visit at all.  It is vital for the economic health of Shrewsbury that we make the most of the opportunities and income well planned tourism offers.
The current provision of public toilets in Shrewsbury is just not doing that.

What a massive shame it is that our Tory led Borough and County Councils instead chose to waste some £750,000 on the Darwin “celebrations” and the hugely costly Quantum Leap slinky sculpture.

Investing wisely in our basic facilities in my view would have been the sensible course, and would be far more likely to bring the repeat visits the Darwin fiasco has so conspicuously failed to produce.

MP Silent on Local Tory Turmoil

The very public spat between ousted former Tory Borough Council leader Peter Nutting and current Tory Shropshire Council leader Keith Barrow throws up several significant questions. Cllr Nutting has been ruthlessly stripped of his Deputy Leadership and sacked from all his other main committee posts on the unitary new authority.  Yet only recently our Tory MP praised Cllr Nutting in the fullest possible terms.

In a Parliamentary debate on Local Government in March 2007 MP Daniel Kawczynski said of the Borough Council “It has an excellent chief executive and a formidable council leader, Peter Nutting.” Yet less than 3 years later Cllr Nutting has been ejected from power by his own Party, and Robin Hooper seems long gone.

As a Councillor on all of the Borough, County and Unitary Councils I always respected Peter Nutting as a hard working local representative. But I had deep differences with him over policy, particularly the spending spree the Tories indulged in with the sale proceeds of the Borough council houses. A recurring problem I found was getting information to scrutinise these spending decisions. The regular exclusion of the public under the exempt item rules, such as happened with the secret sale of the Barker Street car park, is just one example.

Sadly this is still going on. I have found great difficulty in getting details out of the Tory led Shropshire Council, to try and get to the bottom of of the huge Quantum Leap spending total. Yet both Peter Nutting and Keith Barrow are now publicly claiming they want more open and democratic local government. They can start by holding a full investigation into the huge sums spent on the Darwin celebrations, and why local residents  seem to have got so little in return.

And what of our Tory MP Daniel Kawczynski, what has he got to say about this local Tory turmoil? When it comes to his own Party, he seems to go very, very, quiet.

Darwin Desperation

I’ve been told that the local Tories have a photo of me drinking champagne at the Darwin birthday party back in February. They intend to use it “Against me” apparently. Hopefully this is idle speculation, because if not it represents a pretty desperate view of the world.

As an elected Borough and County Councillor, it was not unreasonable for me to attend such an event. For the record all I had was a plastic cup of either champagne or sparkling wine along with around 100 other people. It was hardly the free event of the century. At the time I had no idea of the  huge eventual total cost of the Darwin celebrations – if I had any idea of the eventual cost I would have choked on my drink.

Instead of pointless stunts, what the residents want (see  Shrewsbury Chronicle 14th January 2010 page 9) are answers to my questions about how the councils managed to spend £750,000 on these celebrations with very little apparent accountability.

The Shropshire Star published two very good reports on the final cost of what many residents feel was almost a fiasco. Yet we are still waiting for some credible figures to show exactly how much real inward investment and business was brought into Shrewsbury in return for this huge expense. The ruling Tory Group on Shropshire Council ought to be turning their attention to this question in my view.

Darwin Celebrations – The Reckoning

I was very disturbed to see the cancellation of the 200th anniversary bonfire event at the West Mids Showground, especially as this event was going to be the planned finale of the Darwin Bi-centenary Celebrations 2009.  It is a great shame, but entirely typical, that the year has finished on such a damp squib of a note.

Such promises were made at the start of the year, and very large sums of money were committed by the Tory led former Borough Council. Yet the feeling amongst ordinary hard working people who struggle to pay their council tax is that we seem to have got precious little for our money.

That is the reason why I am asking questions about how the money was spent and what were the results of this expenditure. There has been much press coverage of the problems and huge cost increase in building the Quantum Leap sculpture. However, local residents may well be surprised to hear that the following sums were approved by SABC to be spent as well:

Community Fund -£70,000

Signage & Interpretation-£5,000

Marketing -£50,000

Midlands Co-ordinator-£5,000

Darwin Play-£50,000

Darwin Festival-£15,000

Student’s Darwin Debate-£5,000

Welcome Host Training-£20,000

Real Time Festival-£30,000

Books and Merchandise-£50,000

I will keep digging on behalf of residents until I get some answers.

SHREWSBURY-MORE ON THE TORY RECORD

Other matters raised in Cllr Peter Nutting’s letter included the new livestock market up at the Battlefield junction.

My concern has to be that less than 2% of local residents are employed in agriculture, yet SABC spent some £5m on the new market. The return in rent we local taxpayers get from the new market is less than 1%-hardly a great investment of our money. Peter says the market is hugely popular-not according to the Farmer’s Weekly throughput figures I’ve read. Bridgnorth and Market Drayton markets sell around 10 times the number of beef cattle than does our market.

The Shrewsbury area is surrounded by livestock markets-6 within 20 miles at Oswestry, Welshpool, Ludlow, Bishops Castle, Bridgnorth and Market Drayton. Why was it necessary to build yet another market for around 1% of the population-was this a good use of public money?

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