Blog: Low morale at Shropshire Council
Wednesday 16th February 2011, 8:20AM GMT.
Blog: The Shirehall is a far from happy place as Shropshire Council undergoes a massive transformation of the way it operates.
Staff and the trade unions have been told of plans for sweeping changes to job terms and conditions which, it is claimed, will save the council £7m over the next three years.
Morale is at rock bottom, no matter what authority bosses might say.
Proposed changes include a shorter working week of 35 hours instead of 37 and a reduction in sick pay entitlements.
There are warnings that unless changes are agreed, hundreds of jobs will be lost.
At the same time council chiefs want to create a more flexible workforce and will be changing its opening hours from 9am to 5pm five days a week, to 7am to 7pm Monday to Friday and 8am to 1pm on Saturdays.
What many at Shirehall are now finding hard to stomach is that after deep cuts to the senior management structure, four newly created senior posts have been advertised which will cost up to £370,000 a year to fill.
When I queried the need for these posts, council chief executive, Kim Ryley, said it would be “entirely wrong” to look at the adverts in isolation and criticise the council for recruiting to high level posts, as this is was part of a review of management which will save at least £4 million a year overall.
He said: “The restructure is removing management layers and bureaucracy, to develop a more efficient organisation delivering good quality, value for money local services for the people of Shropshire.
“We have to balance making this major reduction in management costs with the fact that we cannot take risks in terms of the capacity, skills and calibre of our managers.
“We are undergoing a massive programme of change over the next few years and we need excellent managers to make the service improvements the public want to see, and to deliver the £76 million savings target over the next four years.”
Maybe he is right but the move has gone down like a lead balloon and the trade union, Unison, has said it is “absolutely astounded” at the creation of the new roles.
And an air of despondency is not only being felt at Shirehall where staff know they can’t rock the boat too much.
There is a growing realisation among Shropshire residents that budget savings on a scale never seen before are going to cause a lot of pain.
But it would appear there is little that can be done to soften the blow.
True, there is a big protest march and rally against public sector cuts being staged in Shrewsbury this coming weekend as part of a much larger national campaign.
However the ruling Conservative group at the Shirehall has more than 50 members out of total of 74. That is a very strong position to be in. Whether or not that is good for local democracy is another matter but that is the way Shropshire voted last year.
As I look out of my office window, and prepare to go to a council cabinet meeting at which budget savings will be discussed, the weather appears quite grim and cars are travelling with their lights on.
Many more dark days are on the way, that’s for sure, and it will have nothing to do with the weather.
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And I suppose all is sweetness & light at Telford & Wrekin?
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However grim you think it is Mr Morris, without cuts the country will be bankrupt due to 12 years of mis-management by Labour. Councils have wasted money on ridiculous schemes and high wages and it’s no use complaining that there are redundancies looming when everyone in the public sector has jumped on the gravy-train.
I have run a small business for 20 years and watched in utter dismay at how councils and quangos have wasted money that could have been put to good use, if you have to cut back now so be it, the private sector has suffered for years at the hands of busy-body council officials with pumped-up titles making our jobs harder. It wont hurt you all to have to deal with some of the hardship we have all endured and we dont get paid 100k a year salaries for running a dept either. I wont shed a tear for a few less depts in Shirehall, its time to lean up and get your heads down, stop whingeing and join us all down here in the real world…as tough as it may be, it’s the harsh reality of years of squandering money and resources.
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Oh, get off your high horse, Dave.
The economic mess is a little more complex than just being 12 years of Labour. If the Tories had been in during that time, we’d likely have been in the same position. They didn’t see the economy crash-landing either!
And the people who are actually responsible for ‘squandering the money’ in the council are probably the senior officers and councillors – most, if not all, of whom will be untouched by this ‘restructure’.
As for Mr Ryley, you can spot where the Communications and PR staff have carefully crafted and honed his predictable speeches.
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Well said Dave…bang on the button!
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Well, I *will* agree that the last Government didn’t do small businesses many favours, and that the red tape just strangled many fledgling businesses at birth.
Councl red tape hasn’t helped either. The council have been very good at cracking down at businesses putting advertising boards on the pavement for example (citing the usual fatuous ‘health and safety’ excuses) while running scared from Tesco and it’s flagrant breaches of planning permission conditions just a few months back (because they ‘couldn’t afford it’!). I also agree that there are plenty of non jobs in the council that could go with no undue detriment to anyone (other than those who lose their jobs of course). But you can bet the farm that these will be the VERY people hanging on to the bitter end.
But there are hundreds of other people a lot further down the chain I suspect, who don’t deserve to lose their jobs but will be placed first in the queue. And when THEY go, that’s when people are going to notice the difference. Society is full of people who think “I don’t use the schools/libraries/buses etc – why should I pay for them?” (A lot of them make comments here….)
There’s bound to be those who think that its ok for Mr Ryley and his merry band to axe over £2 million for disabled services while spending thousands on pie-in-the-sky senior jobs; these sort of people probably think disablement or hardship will never happen to them, eh? I think that’s where Mr Cameron’s ‘Big Society’ idea is fatally flawed.
Only time will tell as to if anything will change under the Coalition Government; they’re only so far making vague noises about supporting and encouraging new businesses and enterprise; the signs so far is that it IS all talk. One thing’s sure: they’re going to get no help from local authorities like Shropshire, are they?
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Very true Dave, people need to remember that this is labours legacy to us all!
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I’m afraid you’ve swallowed the government’s propaganda hook, line and sinker.
The recession was caused by the collapse of the banking sector, and the previous government’s need to bail them out. If you took the trouble to look at the figures for debt as a proportion of GDP you’d find that almost half of our current debt – some 30% of GDP – is directly attributable to bank bailouts. The remainder of debt, prior to the banking crisis had us at the second lowest level of debt in the G7 countries.
So do we have a schedule for these loans to the banks to be paid back? It appears not.
Have the government decided to hit the bonuses and pay increases for senior bankers hard? No – they have not. In fact they’ve allowed banks to pay out far more in bonuses and salaries than they’ve taken in a levy – but then again the banks do provide more than 50% of Tory party funds, so you can see why they have applied the soft pedal.
If you really think that council workers are ripping you off as a small businessman, can I suggest you look at the billions in income tax that go unpaid both personally and corporately by large businessmen?
Tory advisor Philip Green paid no tax on the profit of Top Shop – instead he channelled the money via his ‘non-dom’ wife to a tax haven. Isn’t he ripping us all off too?
Another example – Chancellor George Osborne’s father has avoided inheritance tax on the millions he will leave to his son in due course. All of this avoidance is legal I’m sure – but morally, it’s completely bankrupt.
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Well said Peter. Big Society will only serve to increase the gap between the rich and the poor. As history shows, the current ruling class with feather their own nests, while extolling the virtues of our shared austerity.
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wrong david, they managed economy very well for 11 years under blair, the mismanagement only kicked in when brown took over for 3 years and to be fair when the banks emploded they should have let them go bust like the tories would have, that would have taught the bankers a lesson
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I was listening to Eric Pickles this morning and I feel that councillors playing a role in deciding salaries of local govt officers would be an invite to corruption.
My other half disagreed and reckoned that decisions at comitteee level with the public demanding of their councillors to justify why salaries are so high for some posts would be more transparant than it is at present.
I do not see a problem with political persuasion as those who are not card carrying Tory are in reality Tory in Shrophire. I fear the already too cosy a relationship between paid salaried officers and the elected bunch will be even more corruptable if councillors have more powers.
As it is planning decisions are very influenced by our elected members but not necessarily in the public interest.
I had to laugh at Eric pickles view that we could just have referendums to make a local decision about council tax, for instance, if we chose. The referendum foisted on us to try and prevent the unitary option cost over £100,000,I understand.
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As I understand the new structure, these jobs are a restructuring of the Assistant director tier. They are not new jobs. I believe at least one current Assistant Director has not been succesful in being appointed and therefore the jobs are being advertised externally.
The Assistant Directors who were unsuccessful now face redundancy with all the associated cost. I foresee tribunals.
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So – they might not be ‘new’ jobs in the strictest sense. Fair enough. But why are these jobs needed at all, if the council is trying to reduce the services it provides (and palm them off on some other unsuspecting organisation)?
One of these jobs is an ‘Area Manager’ at around £100,000 pa. Presumably there are a number of others. Why are ‘Area Managers’ needed for different parts of the county? Shropshire isn’t a large county in terms of population or land-mass compared with some places.
Now I presume that splitting the county into ‘Areas’ is one way of increasing local accountability and ensuring that – say Bridgnorth or Ludlow – don’t feel ‘isolated’ because of management 20 or 30 miles away in Shirehall. That’s almost laudable. But hang on a second….
We previously HAD a large degree of local accountability (of sorts) when we had District Councils, all of which were scrapped – despite overwhelming public opposition. A lot of the people (especially councillors) who pushed hard for a Unitary Authority, telling us it would save money and reduce bureaucracy etc, are STILL on the council. What was the slogan that was used?
“Shropshire Council – better for everyone”.
Back to the drawing board, maybe?
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So, the management structure of Shropshire Council which is less than three years old is wrong and is too expensive admits Mr Ryley!
Who set it up in the first place? the ‘highly qualified’ managers that the council claims have to be paid salaries equivelent to the private sector?
Did any of the councillors object to the ammount of council tax being paid in senior management salaries? I doubt it, being a councillor now has nothing to do with serving the wage slave elctorate, its all about voting in increased alowances for themselves each year (30 odd pence per mile to cycle to meetings???) so they will not bite the hand that feeds them, they rubber stamp everything the senior managers put in front of them.
Did Mr ‘paid more than The Prime Minister’ Ryley have any say in it? if he can see now that it is wrong why could he not see it for the last 3 years?
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To be fair to the Chief Executive, he doesn’t set his salary. And I would imagine the stresses and overall responsibility in a job like that are enormous. (Now that DOESN’T mean I’m crying for him!) But I always think comparisons between Council Executives and the pay of the Prime Minister are a little unfairly skewed.
If anything, the pay of a Prime Minister is ludicrously low (leaving aside all the hidden perks, both while you’re in the job and after you’ve left it….) and it doesn’t matter what the political persuasion of the post holder is :-)
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Simon,
There was an article yesterday indicating thst the true value of the Prime Minister’s package is around £580k. The relatively low salary figure within that is there for reasons of political expediency – so you’re right – it isn’t a valid comparison.
In any event, Cameron stands to inherit a large family fortune, which will doubtless be heavily protected from the rigours of paying tax – so he probably doesn’t care much what he gets paid.
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it is time shropshire had a county city. the queen celebrates 60 years on the throne on 6.2.11, and there is to be a competition to create a city or cities to celebrate this. all entries have to be in by 27/5/11. so far southend on sea have been entered and whose main claim to fame is 4 whelk stalls a golden mile and a mile long pier.
surely with all its royal history the ancient borough of shrewsbury should be a city without the need for micky mouse competitions. i look forward to taking my place in st chad’s cathedral next year
i have much pleasure in formerly nominating shrewsbury as the city of 2012.
let us hope this lifts the gloom in shire hall
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‘Formerly nominating’?
Do you mean you’ve nominated it before?
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Let’s look at the big picture here,
I can’t understand why councils pay huge salaries £100k plus to the top bods,this cannot be justified & is immoral.
Yet people such as school crossing patrols,care assistants,roadsweepers are on low wages and getting tax credits,yet these are the people who will suffer,face redundancy etc.
I would like to see a public sector pay cap of £50k maximum-with no one in a public sector job being allowed to draw above this in wages.
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how on earth would any council be able to employ a senior highways engineer or anybody to do their accounts for only £50k per annum? Some Councils turn over billions in a year, you really want some work experience kid doing their books ?
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I’m a financial controller in the private sector. I’d do their books for 50k per annum!
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People falsely think that you have to pay massive salaries in order to attract the best people,just look at the Baby P case in London a highly paid Director of Children’s Services on £100k plus and look at the result.
People in these jobs have come to expect £100k as a right,it’s time to derail this gravy train once and for all!
The old Town Clerk’s of years ago got nothing like this level of pay and they did a good job.
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i have no sympthy for public sector workers, they work notoriously short hours for massively inflated wage packets and topped up by the best pensions in the world, even bob diamond at barclays probably doesnt get a final salary pension, its rediculous they are moaning the average shropshire worker gets about £15k pa, less in farming sector, so why does a community safety officer or walking to school coordinator command a basic of £25k ?
cry all you like union members, your pain is needed because your precious gordon brown wrecked our economy, thank god david cameron is here to ride to the rescue and make these lazy workers earn their keep
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utter rubbish!
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James,
You clearly have little grasp of economics, and, judging by the lack of punctuation and poor spelling in your post, little in the way of qualifications – hardly surprising then that you can’t achieve a higher salary, is it? If these jobs are so easy and so overpaid – why haven’t you applied?
The recession was caused by the banks – to whom we had to give 30% of GDP in order to keep them afloat – any government would have had to do so, and the underlying cause of the problem was global in nature, principally driven by the US. If you discount that 30% of GDP ‘loan’, we had the second-lowest debt levels of the G7 nations.
The recession we had was principally due to an acute shortage in the inter-bank monetary supply – not a ‘real’ recession, which in the past have been typified by negative growth, high interest rates, and high inflation.
The current massive cuts in the public sector are ideologically driven, not made out of necessity, but are leading us into an old-style Tory recession, where we are beginning to see the classic signs of rising inflation, low-to-negative growth and pressure to increase interest rates.
The poor are being hit hard by rising taxes and inflation – the rich, including the bankers, are clearly being protected, with salary increases for the rich massively outstripping inflation every year.
Moving on to the tripe you talk about public sector workers, they typically work a 37 hour week. Most of them are low-paid (certainly less than the £25k you quote).
The require good GCSEs and typically ‘A’ levels even to get into relatively junior posts – for more senior posts a degree would be a pre-requisite. Historically, the public sector has always struggled to get staff, because the pay and benefits have been lower than those offered in the private sector for a similar level of qualification.
As far as pensions are concerned, the arrangement used to be that public servants got half of their final salary after a full 40 years service, earning this at a rate of 1/80th per annum. This is still the case for some of those in the latter stages of a long career, but the pensions for those who have joined in recent years were reduced some years ago to a significantly lower level.
The average public sector pension is just below £7,000 per annum – hardly a fortune is it?
So it’s clearly nonsense that public service pensions are ‘the best pensions in the world’. If you want to look at the best pensions in the world, I suggest that you look at the sort of pension arrangements directors in large private sector companies have for themselves (including Bob Diamond and the rest of the bankers) – they’d make your eyes water!
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We have a what, a ‘Walking to school coordinator’!
What’s one of them, & Why?
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this is total rubbish spouted by a man who probably has no qualifications and earns 12k a year in tesco and is complaining that a degree calibre person has got a better paid job than them
i agree with the comments if people think these jobs are so easy and over paid then why not apply for them?
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it doesnt help when Erik Pickles slags off Councils so much too
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formerly nominating shrewsbury as a city because no one else will
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what are you on about, will this save the council money if its a city council? im not sure i like the idea of the status that comes with city, but not sure i want to see shrewsbury over developed and too modern, i like shrewsbury as a small medieval town pls
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psssttt ….. the point was that you mean ‘formally’.
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So what we are saying is that the atmosphere is the same as in thousands of companies across the country that are struggling through hard times and having to trim expenses and staff to survive.
Get over yourself and recognise that the good times are over. Time to operate more like a business in the private sector and do more with less.
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And pray, Tyrone, how should an authority which provides a service, such as social care for Adults with learning difficulties, finance such a service. How can such a person, most probably reliant on disability benefits, pay for the 24/7 care that they require. How could a child placed into protective foster care pay for such a service?
Yes, I accept that elements of the Council could and should be more business-like, though I’m sure that many of the “customers” would baulk at being charged for services like environmental health; however I take exception to your blinkered view to “Get over yourself, etc” – authorities up and down the country have being doing more with less for years, with budgets cuts and efficiency savings a normal practice. What stands out now and makes the headlines is the additional sheer scale of the cuts being forced upon local services for ideological reasons, not for any desire to “balance the books.” The cuts now will decimate local services that the most vulnerable in society rely on to provide them with a reasonable quality of life. David’s Big Society will certainly make big government small, but at the expense of the most vulnerable – after all, if a business is to be business-like, where’s the profit in supporting fostercare, or the disabled or the elderly, unless the customer is willing to pay through the nose?
So please, jusr “Get over yourself” before you spout the usual claptrap you read in the Mail!
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Marcus, you miss my point, maybe that’s my fault.
I am suggesting that the workers in the Shirehall take the effort they are putting into feeling sorry for themselves and use it to be a little more effective with the limited resources available to them.
Also, nowhere did I imply that anyone who genuinely needs help be denied that help and am certainly not proposing applying a profit margin to a foster child – your thoughts and words, not mine.
And the Mail? I think not.
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Problem is, local authority workers were facing reducing terms and conditions in the good times!
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To keep women off the roads ,at school times, of course, causing all that congestion and not knowing how to drive on ice etc etc!
I must admit I’d have thought £15,000 a year
is quite sufficient when you see an arboriculturalist job with the council advertised starting at £15,000 and that’s with a degree.
Mangaging people or money has always paid better however whereas care for the elderly or very young,highly responsible and demanding work has always been the lowest paid.
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im not suprised when they are cutting low paid workers pay yet have half a million for public art and half a million for 4 fat cat managers salaries
this council is a rip off and a disgrace
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chin up chaps, only 3 more years then your union chums will be back in power and you can have 5 days extra holiday and 5% pay rises every year to make up for it
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If you mean the Darwin Quantum Leap then that was commissioned as part of the Darwin centenary year and much of the overall cost met by voluntary funding. It is very important to the town in terms of it’s importance to tourism and whether you like it or not Gary it is an engineering accomplishment to to be proud of and well liked by many people.
Our railway heritage on the other hand can be seen all over the country,and is not extraordinary. I see that Oswestry have been offered an HQ for a railway museum by a local business woman, so no cost to the tax payer. We are ploughing in excess of £300,000 for a museum in Abbey Foregate that caters for a small enthuiasts society which apparently did not seem to get lottery funding.
This is surely our money that should be reallocated back into the council coffers when far more important and needful groups are being denied funding.
I still have had no reply from the council regarding this or the proposed new HQ for the benfit of the town councillors in the Quarry.
What is the point of Shropshire Council inviting us to write in if we get no response?
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u talk rubbish eva, no one agrees with u onm that waste of concrete excuse for art
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I agree with Eva.
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no wonder staff are agreived with fools at the top hiring new executives on £110k per annum, there is clearly a massive failure of leadership at the council
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Like it or dislike it Quantum Leap is public art.
How many people r going to be remotely interested in a few railway artefacts in a shed at a similar cost to the taxpayer?
There was no business plan submitted with this application and the claim that a suffcient amount of the building remained is a joke as recent photographs of the site show.
You may have an issue with Quantum Leap Verity but that is built so there is no point complaining. The Railway museum shed can and should be stopped immediately before another penny of our money is wasted though going to the council appears to be a waste of time.
The Sunday Times are asking for examples of councils wasting taxpayers money.
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how about the example of kim ryleys pay being higher than the PMs would the times be interested in that eva~>??
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“The Sunday Times are asking for examples of councils wasting taxpayers money.”
Well that’s easy, just nominate EVERY council in the country, they are all at it.
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hahahahah
am i bovvered? no
they get what they deserve the leftie leaning loony losers at that place, get fat cat wages with massive summer holidays, i have no sympathy they are just getting their just deserts now, cut there pay if they are so good they will go and work else where
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I’m guessing, given your spelling, that you would be quite unable to get any job in the public sector, and only very low-skilled work in the private sector.
Are you just jealous?
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the cheif exec is on £180k basic whilst most of the real frontline workers are between £12-£20k – hmmmmm…. i wonder why people are on low morale then….. let me think….
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i am not suprised there, i feel a bit sorry for people who work in the council because its become like a dirty word now, the council are so hated, mostly because the 100% increase in council tax under Labour, what ever good work goes on it is just not value for money to pay nearly £2,000 a year for your bin to be emptied
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Isnt it sad for them…
No!
they will feel ALOT better when they retire on their golden tax payer funded nest eggs
We have had it much worse in the private sector some going on to part time hours in the recession and only just now getting all the overtime etc back, its only fair now that council workers suffer too
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[what are you on about, will this save the council money if its a city council? im not sure i like the idea of the status that comes with city, but not sure i want to see shrewsbury over developed and too modern, i like shrewsbury as a small medieval town pls]
We would be awarded more dosh from government if we were a city apparently Helen R and you seem to be forgetting that tiny St Davids in Pembrokeshire is a city.
I shouldn’y worry the ethos of parochialism and stasis prevelant in Shrewsbury which accounts for why it is becoming an old people’s home would not change.
In the mediaeval days Shrewsbury was thriving, welthy and forward looking and left a legacy of lovely houses, modern in their day.
There’s little chance of it being anything forwarding looking again. Why do you think Darwin left?
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i agree Shrewsbury should go for city status
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i am not suprised, they are upset, they have a cheif executive on £180k who lives it up at the Savoy and insults his frontline staff by suggesting they only work 37 hours per week when most work 40, 50 or 60 hour weeks as a norm, he has to go, his position is totally untenable following the scandles of recent days, he just has to go now, what ever the cost he is not cut out for the job clearly.
Why not have a vote of no confidence?
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