Shropshire Council has abandoned Shirehall telling staff to work from home

On the back page of Shropshire Council’s constitution – a lengthy manual setting out the the operating procedures for officers and councillors – are words in large type. “DON’T PANIC!” Okay, I made that last bit up (apologies to Douglas Adams). But perhaps if it was true, the council might operate more effectively.

The latest panic the council has got itself into is the withdrawal of staff from Shirehall well ahead of schedule. The remaining staff were given just a week’s notice to clear their desks and find somewhere else to work. That notice ended yesterday. This we are told will save £100,000, less than 0.2% of the money the council needs to save this financial year.

Many Shropshire Council staff have been working from home since the pandemic. Others can’t work or can’t work efficiently at home. Lack of space and children are just two of the reasons staff find it difficult. Some do not have sufficient internet bandwidth or have mobile phone signals that drop in and out. Some need to get out of the house to meet colleagues.

The council has promised to find space somewhere for staff who can’t work from home. It is not clear where. This should have been a planned operation, not a last minute panic.

As always with Shropshire Council, it is not clear the £100,000 saving on heating and lighting costs will be made. Yet papers presented to the council last September suggests the almost empty building will cost more than half a million a year to run.

The council is to move into the Guildhall on Frankwell. This building was occupied by the University of Chester until the council evicted it earlier this year. That move ended any ambitions for higher education in Shropshire Council’s area in the foreseeable future. The council is urgently modifying the Guildhall to accommodate more than 70 council members and core staff. But this is not the end of its planned moves. Council leaders are scheming to build a new civic centre on the opposite bank of the Severn where the multistorey car park now stands. That’s two moves with all the associated costs, all of which fall on council taxpayer.

The council vainly hopes for government grant aid for its town centre ambitions. That was never that likely and now looks like a pipedream. It also hopes for government money for the North West Relief Road but that looks off the new government’s agenda.

Any rational council leadership would have cut its ambitions back to meet its income, just like most households and businesses do. Not so Shropshire Council, which is still determined to pursue its ruinous capital projects.

The shortfall in money to finance these projects needs to be made up. Hence the closure of Shirehall. The (almost empty) site is prime housing land. The council sees that as a source of capital income to finance Shrewsbury town centre redevelopment and the NWRR. The talk is that it will be sold to Cornovii, Shropshire Council’s own housing company. That would mean that the council would both get a capital boost and a revenue income as the only shareholder of the company. However, such a large sale would have to go on the open market meaning a deal with Cornovii is far from guaranteed.

Shirehall is not even going to empty. Some services must remain until locations are found for them. Some meetings will still be held there due to a lack of suitable alternative venues. The building will still need to be insured, have security and have enough heating to prevent pipe bursts. It will also pay business rates. Any savings look vanishingly small.

All this is a typical Shropshire Council mess. It has Liz Truss style ambitions without any grip on the reality of the financial world it operates in.

But we are assured by the leadership that all will turn out fine. In the words of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, DON’T PANIC!