18/10/2025
STATION GYRATORY - QUESTIONS ANSWERED
Apologies for the long post on a Saturday evening, but I thought it was important to put out some information about the Station Gyratory.
This has been in the news a lot lately with the petition from The Buttermarket. I will be speaking to BBC Shropshire on Monday morning breakfast, but I know residents are looking for answers and so wanted to share what we know so far.
HOW DID THIS HAPPEN?
Back in 2023, Shropshire Council was awarded funding by Central Government for both the Riverside and a scheme around the Station. The Conservatives, who were then in charge of the Council, decided to spend the latter pot of money on the wider Station Gyratory scheme.
In March 2024, this was brought to Full Council after a public consultation. It was a very concerning paper. There were some good parts of it about the Riverside itself, but the Station Gyratory parts were sorely lacking in detail and had concerns raised by residents.
Liberal Democrat councillors argued against this and asked that the paper be voted on without the Station Gyratory part.
The Conservatives told us that we were 'putting the town into managed decline' for this. Labour councillors, including Julia Buckley MP personally, voted in favour of the scheme alongside them.
It is worth noting that the Labour’s excellent Broseley councillor, Caroline Bagnall, had the good sense to not vote it through and is due credit for that.
CAN'T YOU STOP THIS?
The funding from Central Government has come with lots of strings attached which makes significant amendments difficult. Council officers have been told to work on ways to mitigate the potential problems which have arisen.
This means Shropshire Council is in a very bad position whereby undoing work or cancelling it would mean handing both back the grant funding, which has already been spent, and incurring more costs in undoing the work. This could run into the hundreds of thousands or millions, money we don't have lying around.
We have already cancelled as much of the next stage as we can, which was going to be a two-way cycle lane all the way up to Pride Hill, downscaling it to only go up to Meadow Place. This will use easily removable street furniture (think Town Walls speed bumps) rather than permanent concrete.
WHAT CAN BE DONE, THEN?
Options are going to be assessed now with an eye to taking action as soon as the works which we are obliged to complete have been, which should be within the next few weeks. I'm always cautious of seemingly simple solutions to complex issues, and every action has a major knock-on here.
Similarly, we can't have major roadworks over Christmas, that would be even more damaging.
Cross-party scrutiny have been asked to look at both the history of the scheme itself and to monitor issues, which the Chair has agreed to bring to their November agenda. They will make recommendations about this and also about similar schemes
I'm not of the view that this will be black or white, but clearly this needs to be returned to and looked at again.
I'M STILL VERY ANNOYED AT THE COUNCIL
Fair enough. We know that this has caused a lot of perfectly reasonable criticism and loss of faith.
If there was a simple and affordable solution, we'd go for it right away, but that isn't the hand we have been dealt. All the same, we will do what we can to put this right, and try to report back as soon as we have a viable option.
