Our Councillor's Report - June 25

From Pamela Davies our newly elected councillor for Clee which includes our parish from the last election in May 2025.

As you may know, both my husband and I are newly elected Councillors, and we think that doing one report to cover both our areas to begin with is best, and we will also be starting to work with our neighbouring Councillor for Clee, (Charles Shackerley-Bennett) to make sure we bring a strong voice together from this part of the county.

As an introduction, we felt it might be nice for you all to know a bit about us both. We are locals and have lived on Clee Hill now since 1981. We both attended Lacon Childe school. We got married at Cleeton St Mary's church and had our reception at Cleobury Town Hall, living in Pinkham, Cleobury for the first 5 years of our marriage. We have two sons (who both attended Lacon Childe school too) and one grandson, with another grandson due in July! 

We are keen to do what we can for our surroundings and we truly love and appreciate how fortunate we are to live in such a beautiful county.

Between the two of us we have 10 Parish or Town Councils to cover.  With the meetings at the Guildhall and the training and induction sessions we have to attend, you can imagine there is a huge amount to learn and quite often clashes in our diary!!  We have tried to get around to all the Parish Council meetings to introduce ourselves in the first instance. We have really enjoyed meeting with you all, especially the ones with cake and tea!

We have been working to deal with the incoming emails with various requests too.  For example, the most regular issue is the reporting of potholes, some are so severe we have written urgent requests hoping to get quicker action, for example the ones at Hopton Wafers. We have also met with various departments at the Guildhall. The most interesting was the Highways where we asked questions "why they fill one pothole and leave a couple only to get worse?" The reason being they have to be a certain depth before they get filled! Why do the contractors come from so far away? How much it costs to fill a pothole? -  which is between £80 and £110 each.  We received an email from Heather Kidd that they will make sure that contracts for potholing are implemented efficiently and to get better value from them.

When we visited Neen Sollars Parish council, one of the Councillors brought to our attention that the council in Devon have repaired small potholes in rural areas themselves. They had training, got all the gear to carry out the works. So, the Neen Sollars Parish council volunteers applied to repair their potholes before they got too big, they too have had training and got the gear, but they are waiting for Shropshire County Council to give them the go ahead. When we attended Guildhall we mentioned this again and they said they will look into it.  We both thought this was a really good idea.  It is more a public liability insurance issue that has to be dealt with. 

There have been other items which have been reported where homelessness and the sleeping rough team have been involved.

Good news stories:

The Post Office in Cleobury Mortimer is to re-open at the end of this month, hopefully.

The road Baveneywood to junction with Stottesdon road is to be resurfaced between 16th and 27th June.

We were delighted to have attended the Farmers market in Cleobury Mortimer and will try and do this more often alongside a representative of Cleobury Town Council.

In the meantime, we hope to see many local people at the Cleobury Festival on Saturday 28th June.

Our first few weeks have been very busy!

Kindest regards

Pamela and David

Ø  Pamela Davies, Cleobury Mortimer Division

Pamela.Davies@shropshire.gov.uk

Ø  David Davies, Stottesdon, Kinlet and Hopton Wafers Division

David.Davies@shropshire.gov.uk