Shropshire Star

Coffee cups and problem bus stop on Shrewsbury action plan

Shrewsbury's new high street action group has come up with a list of short-term goals following its first public meeting.

Published
The bus stop outside Threshers. Photo: Google StreetView.

Councillors, business leaders and members of the public packed out Ashleys Bar on Wednesday night for the inaugural meeting of High Street Evolution.

The group was founded by Gwen Burgess, owner of Darwin's cafe, with the aim of improving the town centre.

She said removing the bus stop outside Threshers off licence, which is a magnet for anti-social behaviour, is one of the top priorities, as well as asking Shrewsbury BID to purchase Christmas trees for all of the wall brackets in town, and researching a re-usable coffee cup scheme.

"Ashleys was absolutely packed and it was great to see so many people there, including Councillor Peter Nutting and Seb Slater from Shrewsbury BID," Gwen said.

"I started this group because business has been erratic this year. I don't want to look back in five years and think I could have done something about it."

Councillor Nutting, leader of Shropshire Council, agreed to look into the possibility of removing the problem bus stop and replacing it with a coach drop-off and pick-up point.

Gwen said: "There's been lots of meetings about anti-social behaviour in the town. This bus stop outside Threshers is a magnet for this kind of behaviour as well as drug dealing and littering. We'd like to see it as a place for coaches to stop because at the moment, most of them just stop in Frankwell which is too far away.

"Another thing we discussed was the BID paying for Christmas trees for all of the brackets around town. They do these things for their members but they have a huge budget so it would be great for them to do it for all of the town. Shrewsbury would look fantastic and how it used to look at Christmas. Seb said he would look into that which is a step forward."

The final goal on the to-do list is researching a re-usable coffee cup scheme which all businesses in the town could get involved in.

"It was something that was successful at the Shrewsbury Food Festival," Gwen said.

"You purchase a cup and then next time you want a coffee, the business will replace it with a clean one while yours is washed and then recycled again.

"We've obviously got some long-term goals too but these are things we can hopefully complete really soon."