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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

He asks me to say what I stand for, that is easy-my positive priorities for Shrewsbury are investment, jobs, education, health and housing. The Tories, whilst going on a spending spree with hard working taxpayer’s money, in my view achieved little in these areas.

Peter Nutting and his Tories spent nearly £30m on the new theatre, yet never clearly told voters that money had come from the sale of the Borough’s council housing stock to the housing association, Severnside. The result is we now have a massive housing crisis in our area. I asked at the time for the Tory leadership to put just £5m into bungalows for the elderly, but despite a chronic shortage of such bungalows this was refused. Time and time again I challenged the Tories about their record on local affordable housing provision, but was continually fobbed off.

We might have a shiny new theatre and sports village, but if you are unlucky enough to be homeless or in housing need in Shrewsbury, what use are these grand projects. I personally deal with housing cases on an almost daily basis. I see the anguish this brings to our fellow citizens, yet the Tories seem to want to brush this under the carpet.

Take the co-location of the colleges as another example. I was in favour of this forward looking project, as it would have brought £70m of investment and quality jobs to Shrewsbury. Yet the local negative Borough Tories, and their MP Daniel Kawczynski chose, for the thinnest of electoral reasons, to align themselves with a narrow view and oppose the project. The result was Shrewsbury & Atcham lost the money, lost the jobs and our young people lost the new state of the art buildings on offer.

On top of following a policy agenda that failed to look after those in most need in our area, neither could the Tories be trusted to even run these projects competently. On their own admission the Sports Village contract was a disaster. Key parts had to be rebuilt, the completion date was significantly delayed and the budget overran by a huge sum.

Yet instead of learning from their mistakes the Tory record on the Darwin sculpture is worse. The foundation design was inadequate, yet somehow we as local taxpayers are expected to pick up the bill for this failure, a bill approaching £100,000.

I notice our MP Daniel Kawczynski seems to have no views on these vital matters. He seems very keen to be pictured regularly in the local press, yet donating his pumpkin to a worthy cause hardly helps solve these critical problems which face us all.

In my opinion a good MP should ensure local council policies look after all sections of our society, especially where that council is led by one party enjoying a large majority. In my view he has totally fallen down on the job in that regard.

A good positive start would be for our Tory MP to demand the Tory controlled Shropshire Council reverse their decision to close the winter night shelter for the homeless at Cleveland House.

Gathered were the planners, council members, former council members and a host of dignitaries including the honourable Mayor and Mayoress of Shrewsbury. They were joined by the band from Shrewsbury School who performed a classical piece written by one of their students and a direct descendant of Charles Darwin who gave a speech dedicating the art installation to his proud ancestor.

Not everything was as well as it seems though, many local residents in the town passed negative comment on the art installation as well as the expenditure and health and safety problems that the sculpture poses.

I am not fan of the project, I am on public record saying as such. After I received phone calls from a group of local people who thought that the ceremony showed yet more spending on the ever spiralling costs of this project, I decided to go along with a small group of interested people and my “Origin of What?” banner to see what reaction the public had to the event. I kept the group small because of the obvious health and safety problems posed by the projects location next to a busy road through the town.

I found that the general feeling from the public to the project was a negative one and not just on the case of they did not like the art. The majority of people objected to the location and the amount of money being spend on the piece which matches my personal view on the project.

I am the first to point out that art is art and that by definition not everyone will like it or appreciate it but I am glad to see that the matter of taste is not the issue that the people of Shrewsbury have with the Quantum Leap but the cost.

I was shocked to hear a few of the invited dignitaries discussing the installation and asking the question what the council is going to do to stop children and toddlers trying to climb it.

Daniel Kawczynski MP
Constituency Office
Unit 1, Benbow Business Park
Harlescott Lane
Shrewsbury
SY1 3FA

Dear Daniel

QUANTUM LEAP-FOR OR AGAINST?

Now that the Quantum Leap sculpture is finished, I was wondering what your views about it are.
Having regard to the fact it is now going to cost a total of £450,000, which is £100,000 than the original agreed contract sum, do you think the way the project has been handled has been acceptable?

It now appears that the Council Tax payers of Shrewsbury will have to foot the bill for the extra foundation works and alignment problems, which seems to the project has not been competently handled to say the least. The responsibility for this mess must lie with the Tory leaders of the former Shrewsbury & Atcham Borough Council.

However I recall during the Unitary debate you were very full in your praise of these people. For example on 21 March 2007 during the Westminster Hall debate on Local Government in Shropshire you said “I invite the Minister to come and look at the way in which Shrewsbury and Atcham borough council operates. It has an excellent chief executive and a formidable council leader, Peter Nutting. It is a truly excellent council, and it would be a great disservice to the people of Shrewsbury if it were dismantled, destroyed and thrown out in favour of an untried and untested unitary authority”.

Can you confirm if you stand by those comments now in the light of the Quantum Leap fiasco?

Yours sincerely

Jon Tandy
3 Snowdrop Close
Shrewsbury
SY3 7TU

Today I asked the local council not to spend any more money on the Charles Darwin Quantum Leap art project. The response that I received from them was that they had no choice but to give the extra £100,000 to finish the art installation because they had to honour the liabilities left to them by the now defunct Tory controlled SABC.

I feel that the arts should be funded in the community but I believe that this installation has been a fiasco from start to well, its not even finished yet and that there are better ways to commemorate the life and work of Charles Darwin other than an abstract art installation that is sinking into the river.

I am now asking for people to assemble in front of this art installation tomorrow afternoon at 3pm (weather permitting of course) to voice their opinions on the excessive funding black hole of a project. A banner saying “THE ORIGIN OF WHAT” will also be displayed.

Whilst I have certainly not agreed with the politics of every member of the Borough, I have always been most impressed with their dedication in volunteering their own time to serve the public.

However, I am certain the decision to move forward to the new unitary authority is the right one. The savings made by combining the administrative functions of the former districts are already bearing fruit. The 0% Council Tax rise is clear proof of that.

May I finish by wishing all those who worked for the Borough Council all the very best for the future, and thank you for all your hard work over the last year to make the transition to the new council such a success.