Calls for resignations over council’s £95m Shrewsbury relief road funding blunder

The councillors involved said they would not be resigning, and accused the party's group leader, Councillor Julia Buckley, of using the issue to score political points.

The meeting saw members vote on changes to the council’s capital strategy, which included the addition of £95.3 million of extra borrowing to cover a “funding gap” in the cost of the road – which would mean the total cost rising from previous estimates of £87m to £182m.

Despite queries from opposition members about where the figure had come from and why there was no mention of it in the report, Councillor Gwilym Butler, portfolio holder for resources, and Councillor Dan Morris, portfolio holder for highways, both spoke at the meeting in defence of allocating the money – but it later transpired that it should never have been included.

Conservative members voted to approve the changes, but after the meeting, the council’s director of resources James Walton apologised and said the amount was accidentally carried over from an earlier draft of the list of projects. He also stressed it was a “holding” figure and not a true estimate of the potential cost.

While the vote did not commit the council to the funding, the blunder went on to make national headlines last week and even prompted a discussion about ‘worst ever typos’ on Radio 2.

Councillor Julia Buckley said: “How can the cabinet members responsible have any credibility left? They didn’t just vote blindly to spend £95m we can’t afford, despite our clear protestations, they spoke passionately in defence of the spend and the vote.

“And yet, just minutes later, our suspicions were confirmed, that this could not possibly be a correct or appropriate vote.

“This represents a serious failure of corporate governance and performance.

“The cabinet members should have questioned this figure – as we did, asked for due diligence or at least deferred the item until adequate checks had been made.

“To publicly defend an error of this magnitude without understanding the need for fiscal propriety and transparency is staggering.

“They cannot continue in their positions. Their actions at the council meeting have brought our institution in disrepute.

“They have made Shropshire a national laughing stock, and they must now do the decent thing and resign.”

Councillor Butler and Councillor Morris said they would not resign.

Councillor Butler said the inclusion of the figure in the list appended to the report was down to “human error”, which he said had been clearly explained by Mr Walton after the meeting.

Councillor Butler said: “The report did not entail voting through any extra monies for the NWRR, the report was for noting and for sending through to the financial task and finish group and subsequently the full budget process.

“The administration has always been very clear that if planning permission is granted for the NWRR a full business case will be produced and then, and only then, will a decision on funding be made. The reasons for this were set out very clearly in the report.”

Councillor Dan Morris said: “Cabinet members have no intention of starting a witch hunt to find out who was responsible, mistakes happen.

“All Shropshire Council members have been advised of the situation and the corrections will be made at the December full council meeting. Therefore, you can only surmise that the reason for Councillor Buckley’s continued noise around this is for purely political reasons.

“In addition, in her attempt to wring out political advantage, decent hard working council colleagues are getting caught in Councillor Buckley’s crossfire and there appears to be no thought of, or regard for, them.”

Councillor Morris said Councillor Buckley had a “blind desire” to block the relief road, despite pleas from residents in villages to the north of Shrewsbury blighted by traffic for the scheme to go ahead.

He added: “Councillor Buckley also needs to explain how she would seek to relocate the traffic displaced by the need to take traffic out of the centre of Shrewsbury.

“Does she know that around half the traffic that uses Smithfield Road for example is through traffic?

“I thought she agreed with the Conservative group that Shrewsbury would be an immeasurably better place if through-traffic was removed from the town centre.

“So how does she propose to replace the over 3.5 million annual vehicle movements that would go from Smithfield Road in Shrewsbury if the NWRR isn’t built?

“In short, why do Councillor Buckley, and indeed her group and all other opposition parties, want to block the removal of unnecessary traffic from the town centre?”