New opportunity for Oswestry residents to help improve area

Oswestry residents will be able to say how they think the town could be improved when the new ‘Action: Oswestry Town’ local joint committee meets for the first time on Wednesday 7 May at The Marches School & Technology College. The meeting starts at 7.00pm, and all people living in the town are invited to attend.

Other items due to be discussed at the meeting are ParkRight and the issuing of and appealing against parking tickets, plus the areas in which speeding is a problem, and what could be done to address this.

'Action: Oswestry Town' is a pilot series of meetings to be held four times over the next year. Each meeting will give people in the area a chance to meet with local councillors, get involved in decisions affecting their community and help decide how the committee spends its budget.

Joyce Barrow, Shropshire County Councillor for Oswestry, said: ”This new series of meetings will give Oswestry residents a real chance to help improve the local area, and is a great example of Oswestry’s town, borough and county councillors all working together to help benefit the local community.”

Phil Box, Shropshire County County Councillor for Oswestry, said: “Action: Oswestry Town will help to ensure that important decisions about the area are made at a local level, and that local people have a real opportunity to influence these decisions. It will also enable us to keep local people up-to-date about the issues that are important to them.”

'Action: Oswestry Town' is one of six new local committees set up by the Shropshire Council Implementation Executive following the success of five local committee pilots that have been meeting in Shropshire for the past year, including ‘Action: St Oswald and Ruyton-XI-Towns’.

The committee has a delegated budget of £25,000 that can be spent on local issues over the next 12 months. People attending each meeting will be able to help decide what the money is spent on.

The meeting on 7 May will also offer updates from West Mercia Police and Shropshire County PCT.

25 April 2008