The Isle of Wight Council has defended spending hundreds of thousands of pounds of taxpayers’ money on legal fees for the Floating Bridge settlement — only to keep the outcome a secret.
Last month, the Isle of Wight Council announced it had reached the end of legal mediation with the boatbuilders and architects of the £3.2 million Floating Bridge 6.
Since the vessel came into service in 2017, it has been plagued with breakdowns, engine failures and mechanical problems which have led to a range of repairs and time out of service.
To try and recoup some of the money it has lost, the Isle of Wight Council launched legal action against Burness Corlett Three Quays (Southampton) and Mainstay Marine Solutions. Now, a Freedom of Information request has revealed the authority spent £366,389.10 on legal fees since the action commenced in 2017.
A breakdown of figures shows £258,934.50 was spent on external lawyers and £107,454.60 for disbursements, including technical expert witnesses costs and counsel fees.
A council spokesperson said mediation processes are generally conducted on the basis each party in the dispute pays its own costs but any settlement reached at mediation may include costs. The council said it was unable to comment upon the specific case.
In the defence of spending hundreds of thousands of pounds on legal fees, however, the Isle of Wight Council has said:
“Mindful and pleased that it has protected Island residents’ council tax, avoiding a long drawn out, complicated and highly expensive High Court case with inherent litigation risk that would have been necessary had mediation been unsuccessful.”
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A spokesperson said:
“The legal fees incurred in satisfactorily resolving the highly technical and complicated dispute have been part of the overall process since delivery of the vessel and were necessary to approach a satisfactory outcome, which has been achieved from a council perspective.”
The amount reached in the settlement is unknown but the council said the terms of the settlement should remain confidential and no party would make any further statement.
The use of a non-disclosure agreement in the settlement was justified by the council leader, Councillor Lora Peacey-Wilcox, after she said it was the difference between deal or no deal although it left a bad taste in the mouth.
We the taxpayer MUST be the judge of whether this “outcome” is successful or not. Hiding behind this smokescreen is totally immoral. This is a stink which will NOT go away IWC.
Well said, you are quite right.
With Burness Corlett Three Quays (Southampton) Ltd putting itself into liquidation a few days before the final mediation meeting, there are questions around how any settlement figure would be paid by a defunct legal entity. Perhaps this latest news goes some way to explain why the Council refuse to disclose the actual settlement situation bearing in mind how much the Council has spent themselves – of our public money by the way !
Good point Dave and one i have raised before. How can a Ltd company come to a settlement with the IOW council if it is in liquidation? Secondly how can it enforce the Non disclose agreement with the council when technically gone bust. There must be some clever legal contributors on here. So, get typing
Don’t worry – we are on the case. My Freedom of Information Request “Refusal Notice” has now gone to the Appeal stage and other actions are being taken.
Disgusting to withhold such details from c.tax payers.
This is like something you would expect from a Communist or Third world dictatorship.
All we can deem from this is the received payment must have been so low, as to not even cover the costs otherwise the Council would be ‘crowing’ of how well it had done to ‘protect the council tax payers’, so clearly it hasn’t.
I fear only an action group to organise mass non payment of c tax before anything meaningful ever changes with this Council now as with guaranteed income, rising every year, the Council unlike us, can spend, waste or abuse any income KNOWING it will be forthcoming forever from the masses.
Totally agree. An action group or an organised island protest that attracted meaningful numbers of people is what is needed. Is there a legal way to force a mid-term no confidence vote in the council? Despite the council having a fixed term mandate, we surely should not have to put up with their incompetence and corruption any longer.
And probably got all of that back and put it in their own pockets
Corrupt too the core.
Disgusting behavioir
This stinks worse than an Isle of Wight sewage outfall after heavy rain.
Well, I think it is disgusting that the general public are not allowed to know the truth.
It stinks ! End of !
Change the law now ! And stop this legal loop hole from hiding the facts.
YOU ARE OUR SERVENTS AND NOT OUR MASTERS ! (imo)
Oh dear oh dear oh dear
You really could not make this up.
Corrupt Isle of Wight council
The Isle of Wight Council defending the indefensible
Someone within IWC happily took £3.2 million of OUR money & gambled with it. This person had no knowledge of what he was taking on. Yet remained, it seems more than happy to continue. IWC are protecting this person. This shows corruption across the board. Not one signal individual with their hands involved in this are being held accountable & it stinks. In 1995 Nick Leeson took down the Barings Bank after being allowed to gamble with others money. Although far larger in scale & had the gamble paid off, a financial personal bonus of huge proportion would not doubt of been received. But it didn’t pay off & he was held accountable!! Read between the lines & I’d say we’ve lost £3.566.389.10 plus!!
This has all been hushed up because they don’t want us to know how much they have lost, and how much we have been ripped off. Why would they care how much they have lost, it was our money in the first place and what ever it was they lost, we will all be ripped off to reimburse it with a raise in council tax that we can’t afford. The whole lot stinks of corruption and we should all refuse to pay. We have a right to know what we are being charged for
Someone from the Council must have stipulated the design and signed it off, if it was a private company they would have been sacked long ago, but their still employed and looking forward to their pension that the rest of us can only dream off the rest of us pick up the bill as ratepayers.
Who ever it was didn’t know what the hell they were doing. To design something that is longer, wider and therefore heavier that is going to be used in the same place as the previous vessel is never going to work, they were told this months ago , but took no notice. It was a balls up right from the second the architect put pen to paper and the clever ones must have known it. It wasn’t rocket science, and the old bridge would have still been working to this day, nothing wrong with it. Too many brown envelopes fluttering about like confetti. The builders are not to blame, they would have built the vessel according to the drawings specifications that were presented
Ber the lawyer’s are happy bunnies!!!!!!
No wonder it took so long …..
Hope you all have a Merry Christmas on us the IOW council’s cash cow’s !!!!!!
So the tax payer once again is out of pocket by millions as no payment of compensation will be paid.If we created a problem like this in our own jobs we would be sacked for severe incompetence. The council members involved should hold their hands up and resign.
Surely Councillor Peacey-Wilcox must realise that, as far as islanders are concerned, her “no details to be revealed” deal is precisely the same as no deal.If anything, it is worse since all we see are more massive losses.
We will all just assume that the council got nothing (or worse, ended up paying them!) and is now hiding behind the NDA.
Still waiting to hear how they plan to set a legal budget if they aren’t allowed to disclose some of their income.
Alliance don’t listen, hiding negligence behind an NDA. Yet next year will filch our pocket, to fund this rubbish. Leader and holder of the transport folio should resign.
IWC you have been busted !! Time for hands up .. no more excuses ..
A couple of years ago I caught the council leader in the red jet queue and as I know them asked them what went wrong with the bridge. The answer was a failing of internal management to oversee the project at critical stages. When asked who would lose their job over this the answer was “it’s a learning issue”, the typical no consequence answer the public sector hide behind.
Whilst the NDA is common in legal issues readers should not focus on that. The real question which the council can answer is why did they agree to such a poor quality product when they had one that worked already? And what has happened to those in the council involved. That will not be covered by the NDA.
And as a second comment, what is the point of having full time lawyers in the council if they then go external?
It won’t be too difficult to work out descrepencies in their accounts when they have to make the information public. Personally I’m hoping for a whistleblower to get the figures into the open. I’m certain I heard Laura Peacey declare that transparency is crucial when she took the post. If they are hiding it, rest assured, we’ve all been robbed. I wonder if anything criminal is being hidden from the public? This issue will never go away.
Big insult to us and to top it off they r putting council tax up for us