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 (please note views expressed in Councillor Mallon's report are not necessarily those of the Parish Council):

County Councillor’s Report to Upton Magna Parish Council – 8th October 2026

BESS

By now most of us have seen the continuing drip-feed of inadequate and incomplete documentation and the inevitable deadline creep.  I have been pursuing this through Chief Executive Tanya Miles, following up from her ‘Walk the Wards’ visit. However, with little progress sadly.  Her latest response:

“The Planning team has updated that a number of matters have been raised by consultees and members of the public in relation to the application. The applicant has been given the opportunity to respond and has submitted further technical information, including an updated noise assessment and a safety risk assessment. A re-consultation is currently taking place with the relevant consultees on the recently submitted information. The application therefore remains under consideration while those responses are received and assessed. An extension of time for determination has been agreed with the applicant until November 2026.”

My reply to that:

“This remains an intolerable situation.  This application has been running more than three times the time limit from national guidelines.  This latest extension is, I believe, the sixth such.  The posting of ‘deadlines’ that quietly pass and are repeatedly extended to be subsequently ignored is a running joke amongst the Upton Magna residents.  The applicant is blatantly trying to run down the clock to bridge the gap on the NESO moratorium on new BESS connections.  This is extraordinary behaviour and a degree of latitude that would not be offered to other applicants.

The new safety risk assessment is utterly inadequate and should have been rejected.  While the report highlights well established concerns, particularly St Lucia’s School (600m to the northeast), it entirely ignores the fact that the site is immediately next to the A5 and the rail line!  A significant BESS fire (that is inherently unextinguishable) will, at best, shut down the A5 and severely hinder the Fire Service response, and at worst cause pile-ups on the dual-carriageway as well as casualties to road and rail users from the wildly toxic combustion products of an uncontained lithium fire.  Our Emergency Planners already rate a closure of the A5 as their number one threat and the potential scenario here is a combined lengthy closure and mass-casualty event.

Our planners are already under outside scrutiny over another controversial planning application in the county and are receiving increasing attention over both this and the Uffington project, which share a case officer, the same case officer who, in my opinion, mishandled the Uffington application and misled the committee as I described.  I urge that you revisit this matter.”

That was this week and I am awaiting another response….

Haughmond Hill Quarry Consultation

I attended the events in Upton Magna and Uffington and met many of you there.  It is early days in the consultation process and I will be gathering more feedback from a residents group next week.  I have several initial concerns.  First, despite reassurances from the Holcim reps, I believe that the transition phase between old and new quarries will involve a medium term increase in HGV movements that will all go to the Sundorne roundabout with a subsequent impact on an already congested interchange.  Also, given that the dust and blasting noise issues are very effectively mitigated by the depth of the aged existing quarry, the new surface excavations will be much more impactful for many years to come.  I am concerned about the impact on the houses at Haughton Crossroads which will be very close to the perimeter of the processing site.  Overall, I am concerned about some mixed messages about what exactly they are proposing, with different versions of plans for traffic volumes, diversion (or not?) of the high-pressure gas pipeline and rerouting of the Shropshire Way.  I will be grateful for any further thoughts you have had since the meetings.

Brendan Mallon

Councillor for Tern