Furious row as councillors draw battle lines over North West Relief Road ahead of election

During a terse final meeting of Shropshire Council before May's local elections, councillors traded a fractious back-and-forth over the project, which has divided the council chamber.

The Conservative administration is wholeheartedly committed to seeing the plan through, but opposition Lib Dem, Labour and Green Party councillors have all told the roads minister they would scrap the project.

The debate, which centred on a call from the Liberal Democrats for an inquiry into the management of the relief road project, came after opposition councillors became aware the business case for the road had been surprisingly published as the meeting was taking place.

The actual vote over whether to hold the inquiry disintegrated into near-farce, as one substitute motion was put forward, then the Lib Dems' proposal was amended - with the group who proposed the amendment eventually withdrawing support.

The situation meant the Conservative administration comfortably saw off the prospect of an inquiry.

But amid the procedural chaos councillors traded fierce claim-and-counter-claim over the handling of the relief road project.

Lib Dem Councillor David Vasmer, who proposed the motion, said: "One of the problems is we have not received the proper information. So we had that debate in 2023 when we voted by mistake for £95m and later on that was withdrawn.

"Later on we had the contract notice for construction which was £110m but we never got a proper figure for the total cost of the road."