Dear Editor

The staff at Shropshire Council have faced 7 years of very difficult working conditions. Some had pay cuts, most pay freezes, there have been many redundancies both voluntary and compulsory. I was glad to be able this year to support an average pay rise of 6% for these people who work under great pressure with huge workloads in understaffed departments. I could not in honesty support an un budgeted for massive pay rise for senior staff. It isimply was not fair and I did not believe the Council could afford pay rises which would pay for up to 2 ordinary staff.

I have thought long and hard about the financial position Shropshire Council finds itself in - and is partly due to Government cuts but also because the Conservative administration since 2009 had no imagination and their policies were concentrated on council tax cuts and not on essential services. This was all about small government and nothing about providing desperately needed public services. What have we seen? Our adult Social Care in costing more and more - around £8 million a year, our roads are now very poor indeed, and there's another £5 million coming out of a poor budget this year and next, Children's Centres being closed, Libraries being closed or passed to communities to run, Leisure Centres losing funding and too much more to list.

^{Letter from Shropshire Council Highways Department}

Dear Resident / Business Owner

I am pleased to inform you that Kier Highways have been instructed by Shropshire Council to carry out Carriageway Resurfacing Repairs at the above location.

Works are programmed to be carried out commencing 25^th July and we envisage the work taking 26 days to complete.

Here are the details of the temporary road closure:

Road Closure: Un-named road 39 metres west of 7 Drury Lane

Start Date: 3rd September 2018

End Date: 5th September 2018

Purpose: Road closure to renew service

Works Promoter: Severn Trent Water

Works Promoter Ref: LB9141201/000060246378B

Enforcement pattern for Un-named road 39 metres west of 7 Drury Lane:
All the time

Dear All

When Ofsted revisited at the end of term it was really the last thing staff needed. But I am delighted to say that the outcome has made it all worth it!

The school was judged to be Good with Outstanding features. A really excellent result. Parents had a letter home on the last day at school.

Congratulations to staff, children and parents. Well done.

Dear All

Thank you very much for the excellent turn out the other night I was really delighted to see you all and even more delighted with your passion to get your roads around Priest Weston put in working order after all these months. You put your case very well indeed.

It was also good that Steve Brown from Shropshire Council could attend to listen to your concerns, ideas and more besides! Such a pity the Portfolio Holder was unable to hear your anger.

Sorry about the delay on the report back on road safety through Marton. My daughter is getting married on Saturday and it has somewhat delayed my response. Monday should see my life getting back to normal!

We have lost the Traffic highways engineer and the road signage officer. This work will now be - hopefully undertaken by a contractor called WSP. This has also held actions up. I have now asked for a meeting with them to progress much of this.

Dear All

The closures and major works to the Leigh road have not been forgotten. They will be happening as soon as the closure can be permitted. There is so much top dressing going on that many of the roads around this important link road that it could not be timetabled for the end of June/ July.

I had a meeting yesterday where I was assured that the money is still in the budget and this will be happening. I should have more information in the next couple of weeks.

Dear All

The top dressing and the removal of the white lines for over a week went from bad to worse when the white lining gang arrived last Monday. They just estimated where to put them!!! AND then got it wrong. On Wednesday they returned but did not have a plan or measurements. It was decided that rather than get it wrong again we would get a better measured map in place.