The consultation on the closure of nine Shropshire schools should be scrapped following claims information being used in the process is inaccurate, say councillors.

Members of Shropshire Council attacked the authority’s own consultation on education yesterday, claiming reports are factually incorrect, the process is not pupil-centred and schools had not received enough information following the announcement over the planned closures.

The claims were made at the authority’s safe and confident communities scrutiny committee, which was assessing the consultation so far.

Councillor Heather Kidd, who was wearing a save Stiperstones t-shirt, said she was concerned there were a number of reasons being put forward for the closure of the school which were not true. “All sorts of things are incorrect,”she said.

“Please can we withdraw it then go back out to consultation. I would prefer it if you would cancel the consultation altogether. You’re consulting on false premises.”

Councillor Beverley Baker said: “Why is this consultation taking things back to front?

“It seems they have taken the schools and formulated the facts that fit, because they aren’t always relevant.

“The figures just don’t add up, they’re not right.

“This whole report doesn’t look at the children. It takes no consideration of the impact on the children and how they are feeling.”

It was also claimed some schools had not received information during the consultation period.

David Taylor, the council’s director of children and young people’s services, said: “The message coming back is the information flow coming out to the schools to support them in moving forward and coming back with proposals hasn’t seemed to be there. We will try and address that.

“Some of the changes and challenges aren’t going to go away, we are facing difficult, failing local education structure across the county on £10 million less with less children in it.

“My duty is to try and be fair to all children in Shropshire and the focus is not simply to save money or come up with statistics, but about saying how we can use the resources best to get the best out of the children.”

By Paul Mannion