Shuttle bus ‘key to Oswestry’s future prosperity’
Friday 24th June 2011, 4:20PM BST.
The future prosperity of Oswestry town centre will “hinge to a large extent” on the introduction of a 29-seater shuttle bus service, a leading councillor today warned.
The shuttle bus service is one of the conditions attached to planning approval for the building of Oswestry’s edge of town supermarket.
The store developers insist the bus service, and more than £250,000 of other improvements as well as investment by Oswestry Town Council, will protect the town.
But Shropshire councillor David Lloyd today said he feared the bus, which will take shoppers from the new store on Oswestry’s livestock market site into the town centre, may not be enough to arrest the “potential drift of trade away from the town centre”.
Councillor Lloyd, Shropshire Council’s speaker and a former Oswestry borough councillor, said: “While it is one of the fringe benefits stemming from the building of a new store, cinema and other services I believe more is needed if Oswestry town centre is to remain viable.
“I cannot see a 29-seater bus being enough of an incentive for those who will use the new development for shopping or leisure to go in to town.”
The Oswestry Coalition campaign group has also voiced concern that the planning deal will not protect the town.
Those concerns failed to stop councillors agreeing the supermarket deal at a meeting on Tuesday.
Simon Hoare, for developers Liberty Mercian, told the meeting the shuttle bus would enable shoppers to park for up to five hours and take a free bus into the town centre.
He said: “They operate at developments across Britain and work very well.”
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Shame Cllr David lloyd was sitting in place of Cllr Joyce Burrows, as I feel the result might of been different.
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