It’s Shropshire’s Conservatives who should apologise – says Councillor David Vasmer

Liberal Democrat Councillor David Vasmer, has responded to public criticism from the local Conservatives:

Dear Richard,

Thank you for your emails of 25th May and 5th June.

It seems strange that just over a year since you lost control of Shropshire Council after it was re-created as a unitary authority in 2009 – that is 16 years of continuous control – you have the cheek to demand action from an administration that has been in control for just over a year.

The state of our local streets and public spaces has not deteriorated overnight – it is the result of Conservative Councillors cutting our services and also failing to adequately resource a team to monitor the performance of the contractors they put in place.

By contrast in just one year, we have set up a process that offers Town and Parish Councils the option to help Shropshire Council maintain our streets and public spaces. This is part of a strengthened partnership working culture and an inclusive can-do attitude that recognises residents’ needs. That offer has already been taken up by Shrewsbury and Broseley Town Councils where residents are noticing a real improvement, and we hope that this offer will be taken up by some councils in North Shropshire soon.

We have also taken action to digitally record the location of all public bins in North Shropshire and reorganise the teams that empty them so that this work can be done more efficiently. However, what we found when we took power was that the council – remember the one you controlled until May last year – did not have an established mechanism to maintain records of all the public bins that it was emptying!! The council didn’t even know how much it was paying contractors to empty public bins.

Now our teams are using more efficient routes, which are recorded on tablets, and in the long term we will be able to provide a more efficient service that’s agile to change and responsive to environmental needs at a lower cost – something you never achieved in 16 years of control!

Some public bins have overflowed recently but that’s because many were not recorded by your administration and the contractor did not even know which bins it was supposed to be emptying!

You should be apologising to residents for the state of our streets and public spaces and thanking the new Liberal Democrat administration for tackling the problems in one year that you neglected for sixteen!

Best wishes

David

NOTES

• Councillor David Vasmer is the Liberal Democrat Portfolio Holder for Highways and Waste at Shropshire Council. 
• His letter was sent in response to emails from Richard Hamilton, from North Shropshire Conservatives, which they made public on Facebook.
• Huge dissatisfaction with Shropshire’s Conservatives saw them collapse to third place at Shropshire Council’s elections in May 2025, losing 38 councillors.
• The Conservatives had run Shropshire Council from April 2009 to May 2025.
• The full results for Shropshire’s May 2025 elections can be seen here.