Council spends over £39 million on a revamped transport plan then cancelled it

Shropshire Council spent over £39million on a transport plan built around a road, before the road was declared unaffordable and the plan was cancelled.The Shrewsbury Big Town Plan brands itself as “ambitious and bold, reshaping the physical public realm and matching it with an outstanding public experience,” and one of the flagship changes under the new plan would be in the introduction of the North West Relief Road, with the new road as a whole being costed at £71m. However, estimates now believe that the costs for the plan have risen to over £162m.The council previously said that, due to the increased costs and the financial position of the council, it could not continue to build the North West Relief Road. TRENDING Stories Videos Your Say Work on the road was paused last summer after the Labour government said it would not provide the £215m worth of funding now required to complete the project.Construction on the road stopped when the government confirmed there would be no further funding given to the council to complete the project.Shropshire Council then deemed the road unaffordable despite already beginning construction.The Department of Transport has yet to decide if the council will have to pay back the money that has already been spent on the doomed scheme. The BTP transport strategy has not been revised since the cancellation, according to Reform Shrewsbury.The first major infrastructure of the BTP was a £3.8m redesign of the station gyratory at Castle Foregate.The redesign has drawn attention due to its lack of accordance with national guidelines.Changes include a floating bus stop island that is around 1.1 metres in width, which falls significantly below the DofT rules, which dictate it must be 2.5 metres wide. LATEST DEVELOPMENTSBritain's brick industry risks being KILLED OFF due to 'factually wrong' Net Zero standards - 'Provable nonsense!'Britain is now becoming a 'violent society', ex-Australian Deputy Prime Minister warnsTaxpayers foot £600k Net Zero bill after ferry staff need training to pump 'climate-friendly fuel': 'Floating monument to SNP waste and incompetence!'In April 2025, the DofT issued guidance against using this type of design for bus stops.Four months after the cancellation of the NWRR and six months after the advice from the DofT, the bus stop was installed.After its installation, fire engines were documented using the cycle lane to bypass gridlock caused by the redesign.The chair of Shropshire Fire and Rescue Authority told a council scrutiny committee the situation was putting lives and property at risk.Local bus services also suspended use of the stop, making the redesign obsolete.Shrewsbury Reform UK shared a public opinion survey with GB News that shows every one of the 15 BTP-specific proposals scored below the neutral midpoint of 3 out of 5.Confidence in the BTP traffic model following the NWRR cancellation recorded a mean of 1.70 out of 5, the lowest score in the survey, with approximately 74 per cent of respondents giving the minimum score of 1.65 per cent of respondents said they would visit the town centre less often if vehicle access were reduced. 94 per cent rated emergency service access as very important.Shrewsbury Reform UK has submitted FOI requests to the council to further understand the concerns that were raised with the council, as well as the decision to proceed with BTR work following the NWRR cancellation.A spokesman for Shrewsbury Reform UK said: “The timeline tells its own story. The North West Relief Road was declared unaffordable in June 2025.“Four months later, the council installed a floating bus stop that its own DfT guidance had advised against, on a scheme whose traffic assumptions had just collapsed. The safety audit is now in the council's hands and has not been published.“Residents and businesses are dealing with the consequences, and the plan that caused them has not changed.GB News has contacted Shrewsbury Town Council and Shropshire Council for comment. Our Standards: The GB News Editorial Charter