Our representative on Shropshire Council is Brendan Mallon, who represents Tern Division. He often attends Parish Council meetings and is always happy to take questions or suggestions on local matters. Councillor Mallon also presents a report to the Parish Council and the contents of the latest one can be found below:

County Councillor’s Report to Upton Magna Parish Council – 12 Feb 2026

BESS Updates

Since my last report I have received a response to my enquiry about the position of the planning officers on the NESO policy change.  Depressingly but unsurprisingly the planners maintain that this is not a material planning consideration.  I further challenged them that they will knowingly be approving a scheme that can only proceed if it is commenced within the three-year window and then left as an eyesore for at least 6 years before it has a hope of being connected to the Grid.  Again, this does not appear to be a concern for them.  Nevertheless, I do believe that the new NESO policy will still make the business case for either Upton Magna or Uffington sites very difficult.

Over at Uffington, the PC and local activists are still fighting hard despite the granting of planning permission to that site.  I joined them on a site visit with the Canal and River Trust to discuss their involvement as they own and are in the process of renovating the Newport Canal that needs their permission to form a crossing at the only feasible site access point.  They are likely to grant permission as they are a charity in need of funding.  However, we were able to convince them of the pitfalls of creating a suitable crossing for construction vehicles and fire appliances as well as environmental issues, so at least we can expect them to demand significant compensation and guarantees of building an expensive heavy duty swing bridge, further increasing the overheads for the developer…..

Getting back to Upton Magna, as you know, we have now passed the agreed expiry date of the 30th of January and the application is not on the agenda for next week’s Northern Planning Committee meeting. I have emailed the case officer for an update and hopefully I will have a response before tomorrow night.

Devolution and Shropshire Partnership

I attended Cabinet today and observed the discussion on the Pilot scheme operating across a number of our town councils.  As you are aware, they are looking to transfer both services and assets/liabilities to local councils.  While none of the Tern Parish Councils seem to possess suitable assets, there is of course a question mark over essential services such as ‘Street Scene’ activities and who will hold responsibility for them.  I pressed Deputy Leader Councillor Alex Wagner on this and while he stated that Shropshire Council will continue to provide a degree of support, this is likely to be diminished.  Essentially local councils will be expected raise cash through Precept to fund these activities.  For example, Shrewsbury Town Council has just lifted their Precept by 100% to fund these services with further annual increases inevitable.  He stated that we can expect more information and engagement on this sometime in Spring this year.

Brendan Mallon

Councillor for Tern