Towns get extra 12 months to find funding in surprise Shropshire Council move

In an unexpected development, Mr Pate said "a little bit of money" had been found in Shropshire Council's budgets to give towns and parishes more time to plan.

It comes as the strength of feeling over the loss of services in Ludlow reached new heights. Almost 150 people attended the first meeting of the People's Alliance for Ludlow – a group set up to safeguard key assets.

The announcement by Councillor Pate has been welcomed by Ludlow councillor Andy Boddington who said he was "very glad" the previous timescale had been abandoned.

The smaller councils had been told they had to come up with alternative suggestions for how things like libraries, museums, youth and leisure centres might be funded in the future by September, as Shropshire Council planned to cut budgets for such services to zero from April 2017.

But now he said a revised financial strategy had allowed for a more time.

Mr Pate said: "We have listened carefully to town and parish councils.

"The conclusion that we have come to is that probably the deadline of September was too short a period. We have found a little bit of money to give them more time to develop their plans - about 12 months."

"We want to help them, we want to talk to them, to see ways we can continue to develop these community services.

"As far as we are concerned, it is not 'us and them', it's us working together to deliver those community services which we know are valued in our villages and towns."

It meets one of the requests made by 10 town and parish councils around Shropshire who met and drew up a 'Memorandum of Cooperation' last month, that called the time frame for service cuts "wholly unrealistic".

However, town clerks said the announcement had come as a surprise.

Marian Giles, clerk of Church Stretton Town Council, said the news had come just days before a consultation day in Church Stretton on whether to raise the council tax precept to help safeguard services.

She said: "It doesn't make any sense when we are trying to do this exercise.

"Only last week we were being told the deadline was still September. We will still go ahead with that so that we have the information, but it does affect the consultation as it means the urgency will not be the same."

"I wish they would make up their minds."

Gina Wilding, clerk of Ludlow Town Council, which spearheaded the gathering of 10 councils and the call for an extra year, said she had not been aware of Councillor Pate's announcement.

Andy Boddington, Shropshire Councillor for Ludlow North said: "I am very glad that an impossible timescale has now been abandoned. Its threat that parish councils had to agree to take on services by September caused much anger."

But, he said: "As much as we hate and disagree with what is going on, we must still work with the council on service transfers.

"Not to do so would let our community down, especially our more vulnerable residents."