Our representative on Shropshire Council is Brendan Mallon, who represents Tern Division. He often attends Parish Council meetings and is always happy to take questions or suggestions on local matters. Councillor Mallon also presents a report to the Parish Council and the contents of the latest one can be found below (please note views expressed in Councillor Mallon's report are not necessarily those of the Parish Council):

County Councillor’s Report to Upton Magna Parish Council – 9th July 2026

BESS Application

I have submitted a question to Full Council next Thursday to address the increasingly farcical rolling extensions to this application.  The text is as follows:

"An application for a Battery Energy Storage Site near Upton Magna (25/01638/FUL) is now entering its fifteenth month.  The Latest Consultation Expiry Date has been extended at least four times now and is just two weeks away.  The Latest Site Notice Expiry Date was the 6th of June and the Agreed Expiry Date was the 30th of June. 

This is an inordinate amount of time.  The government’s planning guarantee policy is 'that no application should spend more than a year with decision-makers, including any appeal. In practice this means that major planning applications should be decided in no more than 26 weeks and non-major applications within 16 weeks. Appeals should be determined within 26 weeks. The planning guarantee does not replace the statutory time limits for determining planning applications.'

It is simply implausible that an individual or small developer would be awarded this extraordinary degree of latitude. This particular application is not on the list of sites that will be permitted to connect to the grid before 2035 and one might suspect that the applicant wishes to prolong the process as long as possible in order to partially bridge the gap until 2035.  No applicant should be permitted to game the system like this, tying up Planning Officer resources that are already in short supply and extending the uncertainty for my residents.

Will the Council take decisive action to end this particularly unacceptable situation of an applicant making a mockery of the Planning System by drip-feeding incomplete information to manipulate our processes and reject this application on that basis?

Furthermore, will the Council provide clear and robust policy for Members, Officers and the general public on how far deadlines can legitimately and reasonably be extended and well-defined parameters for agreeing such extensions, including a maximum number of extensions, so that we never see such a subversion of our processes again?"

Haughmond Hill Double Yellows

Shropshire Council is committed to implementing this scheme but not to a timeline for it.

They say they “can confirm that the schemes/funding for the Traffic Engineering works programme for this financial year have now been agreed.  I have included the requested introduction of parking restrictions ie. double yellow lines at Haughmond Hill within my revenue funded programme.  Subject to current work commitments/resources, we will commence design work for a package of priority requests/locations where the introduction of new parking restriction have been requested which will include Haughmond Hill.  As the introduction of new parking restrictions require a Traffic Regulation Order (TRO) to be made, there is a legal consultation process we need to follow first.”

Shrewsbury Station Gyratory

The report of the Task and Finish Group set up to investigate this debacle submitted its final report to the Economy and Environment Committee last week which then recommended to Cabinet yesterday two options: full restoration of two traffic lanes or conversion of the cycle lane to a traffic lane reserved for buses, taxis and cycles.  While they have reserved judgement on which of these options will be finally selected, they have agreed that one of these will be implemented, meaning that the ‘cycle lane to nowhere’ and the associated ‘floating bus stop’ will now be removed.

Shirehall

Detailed briefings from the Task and Finish Group, Officers and an independent assessor from the LGA have been received.  The three options seem to be: sell off as it is; demolish and clear the site and sell with planning permission; retain and develop as a mixed-use site as part of a Joint Venture with a private developer.  The Council is under pressure from the MHCLG (Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government) to dispose of the site ASAP.

The cost of demolition and clearing has been estimated to be anywhere between £3.5 and £5.6 million and the site has been valued at around £5 million so there is a real danger that the site would realise little, no or negative profit.  If Shropshire Council was to clear the site themselves (at an up-front cost of up to £5.6 million), given the state of the market and the wider economy, it could end up in a scenario where it would spend over £5 million of further borrowing that may not be recouped for years.  Given those figures, selling as-is may at best result in an offer of £1 to take it off our hands.  As such, many Members are favouring the Joint Venture option, which would retain a fit-for-purpose Council building and chamber on part of the site with the rest developed for mixed-use customers.

A special Cabinet meeting will take place on Tuesday, 14th July, with all Councillors being given an opportunity to challenge the decision making and preferred choice.

Brendan Mallon

Councillor for Tern