Development | Oswestry Growth Corridor

New houses and employment will soon be on the way for Oswestry thanks to local efforts to secure funding from the Government through the One Public Estate (OPE) programme and the Housing Infrastructure Fund (HIF).

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Region: North West, West Midlands

Theme: Housing (in OPE)

The challenge

Oswestry is the second biggest market town within Shropshire but suffers from a lack of development from the private sectors due to a number of constraints posed by physical factors such as flood risk and access. 

Progress on the delivery of housing and employment opportunities has been slow. The lower land values have encouraged a much greater proportion of affordable housing completions in the town, 96 affordable dwellings in 2017/18, on sites allocated for open market housing. Whilst this clearly has social benefits, it emphasises the challenge of supporting balances of housing growth and achieving a choice of housing types in Oswestry.

The story

In order to improve housing delivery in Oswestry, OPE awarded £145,000 funding, in February 2019, to develop a coordinated approach to growth and development in Oswestry which can be replicated in other market towns of the County. 

This scheme supports the Right Home Right Place ethos, which is at the heart of Shropshire’s philosophy of ensuring that the right homes, in the right place and at the right price are developed across the county and delivered at pace. 

Shropshire Right home right place logo

The Right Home Right Place ethos combined with the OPE collaborative way of working, has fostered an environment where partners consider proposed developments holistically and identify integrated and inclusive solutions to support residential and commercial opportunities.

The OPE programme brings together the following key land owners and active partners across Oswestry: Oswestry Town Council, Shropshire Council, Environment Agency, West Mercia Police and Shropshire Fire and Rescue Service. 

Steve Charmley, Shropshire Council’s deputy Leader and Cabinet member for corporate and commercial support, said:



“This year’s OPE award is double that awarded in the previous round which highlights the confidence from central government in our ability to deliver key public sector projects in the county.



"The funding will allow us to work at a faster pace and support the town’s growth. If successful, the project could even be rolled out to other market towns across the county”. 

OPE is supporting two components to boost development and employment:

  • master planning within Park Hall as part of the Council’s Local Plan Review, which has the potential to deliver approximately 200 housing units and employment opportunities to meet the area’s needs
  • a key part of the project involves working closely with the Environment Agency and Severn Trent Water who will be taking a town-wide approach to drainage management. Such scheme has the potential to unlock land for 1,000 homes which cannot be brought forward at the moment because of flooding risks.
Hayley Deighton from the Environment Agency, said:



“This is a front-running example of how water management can help underpin sustainable economic growth and support the growth aspirations of partner organisations. We’ll be looking closely at this pilot scheme to see how we can extend it elsewhere in the country.”

Improvements to the strategic highways network are required to bring forward planned housing and employment development that are facing significant infrastructure costs for traffic mitigation, which affects the viability of planned sites and local growth aspirations. 

In March 2019 the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) announced the award of £9.3m from HIF to improve the capacity of the road network on the A5 at Mile End and improve the viability of planned housing developments. This follows a funding bid by Shropshire Council in 2018. 

The work, undertaken by the council and Highways England, on the remodelling of the strategic road network at Mile End junction as part of the HIF proposal, has resulted in the development of an innovative solution, opening up land opportunities, which will be explored as part of the wider Growth Corridor master planning work supported by the OPE Programme. 

The outcomes

The project aims to deliver the following outcomes over the next ten years:

  • land released for over 1,150 new homes
  • creation of over 4,000 jobs which include 42 construction related apprenticeships.

For further information please contact our Regional Programme Managers for North West and West Midlands.