Stratford District Council’s Leader, Cllr Susan Juned, was put under pressure when she faced a barrage of questions at Full Council this week from a reignited Conservative Group, following recent changes, which have welcomed Cllr Malcolm Littlewood at the helm as its acting leader, supported by the whole group.
A revitalised, robust opposition took Cllr Susan Juned and her administration to task on a number of unanswered issues, but unfortunately, the allocated time for questions in the Chamber was insufficient to enable the demands of all ten Conservative councillors to be heard on behalf of their residents.
Key issues raised by the Conservative Group included ZERO progress by the
administration on a motion to Full Council proposed and recommended two years ago in April 2023 on the cumulative impact of solar farms in the district.
This proved particularly disappointing and concerning to Cllr Anne Parry, ward member for Wellesbourne North and Rural, who now has two industrial scale solar farms in her ward, as the LibDems are continuing to kick the loss of landscape character and food producing agricultural land in specific parts of the district down the road for a further three years.
This was confirmed by Cllr Juned who advised that the cumulative impact of solar farms would now have to wait for inclusion in the development of the South Warwickshire Local Plan! However, she failed to realise that detailed planning policies - such as renewable energy policies - will not be developed until the second part of the Local Plan, work on which is scheduled to start from 2028 – five years after the Conservatives first raised the issue , when quite possibly the district council will have ceased to exist!
Cllr Malcom Littlewood was equally surprised when questioning Cllr Juned about the devolution proposals submitted to the Secretary State, as she admitted there would be little or no savings for the administration’s preferred option of two unitary authorities in Warwickshire, which would consequently impact on Adult Social Care, Childrens’ Services and SEND by breaking up currently successful services in half to support two new authorities.
The lack of a strategy to support the tourism business across the district also caused the group concern despite the investment of council taxpayers’ money funding Shakespeare’s England and also Stratford BID.
As the next scheduled full council meeting is for the Annual Council on 14th May, opposition councillors will now have to wait until July to be able to publicly hold the Leader and the Lib Dem administration to account, which can’t come soon enough for the Conservative Group.
