Shropshire Star comment: Expansion will divide opinions
Nobody who has passed through Shifnal in recent times will need telling that the town has seen major housing developments which have brought a significant expansion.
This could just be the start.
Shropshire Council is looking at the idea of gobbling up green belt land as part of a continued growth which will dwarf that which has taken place in the last couple of years.
Shifnal has been earmarked as one of the council’s key centres for development up to 2036.
It is the town’s good fortune, or bad fortune depending on how you want to look at it, to have a strategic location between Telford and Wolverhampton, and to be in touching distance of the M54.
The prospect opens up of it being part of an “M54 corridor” between Telford and Wolverhampton. It also has the advantage of having swathes of land stretching out in all directions.
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New housing needs to be accompanied by new jobs if Shifnal is not going to be just a glorified commuter town, and to that end there are a proposed 40 hectares of employment land.
Infrastructure too is part of the package. Shifnal is on a main road route and having much more traffic pouring onto the local roads as a result of more housebuilding will create an increasing headache.
Under the ideas being considered, this would be eased somewhat by a planned bypass connecting the Wolverhampton road with the Priorslee road.
What we know about bypass roads like this is that they become de facto new town boundaries. In other words, the towns grow to meet them. You can look around and see many cases in which land between the bypass and the town edge has been gradually filled in. So in the longer term, that will become one of the issues to ponder.
What we do know is that as the century unfolds we are going to need more and more houses, which means finding acceptable sites. Shifnal is a proud and ancient town but turning it into a key centre for development will have an impact on its character.
Some Shifnal folk will see it as an exciting opportunity for the future. Others will see it as their town being sacrificed in the name of progress, becoming in effect a detached suburb of Telford .
