A progress update

The campaign to stop the development on the edge of the conservation area at Ellesmere rumbles gently on with some good news and some dead ends. If there is one element of this whole shambolic process which has continued to irritate me it is the lack of any communication, outside of the website, from Shropshire County Council to the people of Ellesmere. There is a plan "under consultation" which is going to form the basis for a significant enlargement of the town not to mention the potential impact of the mere-side development and nobody knows about it! The only reason we know is because the land owner started knocking down trees which led one inquisitive neighbour to get online to find out why.

The town council practically disown the "SAMDEV proposal" because it came from Shropshire Council, they will neither comment upon it or oppose it as it has changed from the original plan they sent up to Shrewsbury in a few significant places. The local MP Owen Paterson refuses to get involved because he is not a democratically elected member of the Council in question and so in effect all of the democratic processes are ignoring the problem. Shropshire council are supposed to be holding a public meeting as a part of the consultation but they are on holiday and cannot set a date until May so 2/3rds of the consultation time will be lost before we are even officially told of the plan. I would like to share with you a few facts about this plan to which you can draw your own conclusions:

1. There has been no official, public notice to the people of Ellesmere that there is a proposal to build between the cemetery and the mere.
2. If this plan is adopted the towns development boundary will be moved to just 20 meters from the mere edge to encompass this field.
3. The field is owned by a Shropshire Councillor, Claire Wild who sits on the central planning committee.
4. When Ellesmere Council sent in their proposal for the SAMDEV plan this field was marked as "Protected" and was not marked for housing development.
5. When Shropshire Council published the plan it had been marked for development of 22 houses.

Moving on, the Border Counties Advertizer has decided to print a nice piece regarding this campaign, page 12 in todays paper, so thank you to them for flying the flag and we are close to hitting a few milestones in terms of exposure. We are just on the cusp of our visitor counter hitting the 1,000 mark which must mean that a few more people are aware of this plan than would have been if it had been left to the Council. Also our Facebook group is just about to hit the 50 mark so thumbs up to everyone who has joined up and if anyone else would like to "like" us click here.