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Oswestry business park plans ‘should be brought forward’
Tuesday 16th November 2010, 9:00PM GMT.
Oswestry desperately needs more industrial land to bring new jobs to the area, town councillors have said. They say proposals to create a business park should be brought forward.
A report on economic issues facing Oswestry has highlighted the lack of readily available employment sites and low levels of business start-ups and a poor business survival rate.
It said there had been a rapid decline in manufacturing employment in Oswestry over the past 10 years, a drop of 36.2 per cent. That compared to a drop of 22.3 per cent for Shropshire.
Mr Mark Pemberton, head of economic development for Shropshire Council, said although Oswestry did not depend on public sector employment as much as other Shropshire towns, there was low employment within knowledge intensive sectors and a comparatively poorly skilled workforce.
Town councillors want to find ways for Oswestry to woo back students who leave the area to go to university and say a medical business park, mooted by the Orthopaedic Hospital a decade ago, would have helped to do this.
The lack of general industrial land has been highlighted as the main problem by the town council.
It is writing to Shropshire Council urging it to bring forward a scheme in the local plan for a business park off the Oswestry bypass.
Councillor Martin Bennett said: “The plan is to create an employment site to the south east of Oswestry, a fully serviced business park. Can we bring this forward?”
Land a Weston Farm on the edge of the town has also been earmarked for industrial land.
However Mr Pemberton said that gaining access to the land had proved difficult.
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