The Isle of Wight councillor for East Cowes has hit out at County Hall for ‘repeating all the same mistakes’ with regards to the Floating Bridge.
East Cowes Town Council received a briefing last week which Councillor Love said was not attended by the senior officers responsible for the beleaguered vessel.
Councillor Karl Love said the council’s engaging of engineering and consulting group SYSTRA was ‘yet another layer of unnecessary cost’ in the Floating Bridge 6 replacement process and he questioned their appointment.
At a full council meeting at the end of last month, the independent councillor sought answers over the ferry’s future, telling members ‘not so much as a nut, screw or nail’ had been purchased 14 months after the council agreed to embark on a replacement process.
The floating bridge is ‘losing a million pounds a year and nothing’s happening’, he exasperatedly told the chamber.
Venting his frustrations after yesterday’s briefing, he said:
“The Isle of Wight Council have studied this river crossing to death over the years and little has changed.
“Do officers want SYSTRA to keep studying and planning so they can eventually find a reason not to replace the Floating Bridge while this red tape process eats up all our funding on studies and planning rather than taking the actions our council has agreed and directed officers to follow?”
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Councillor Love added that if officers ‘don’t want to deliver’ what Isle of Wight councillors have directed, ‘they should be replaced’.
On its website, SYSTRA says ‘it supports its clients in all transport infrastructure projects, including airports and ports.
‘Our network of experts, located in all regions of the world, can help you to design and organise airport terminals, model port terminals, carry out environmental studies or provide building expertise.’
In response, an Isle of Wight Council spokesperson has said:
“In March 2024, cabinet took a decision to replace the current floating bridge, accepting the recommendations set out in the cabinet report as an indicative process for the work that was needed.
“The council needs to clearly set out and understand the respective issues in relation to the current operations, outline the requirements and design and then establish a detailed technical and economic business case for the preferred solution.
“To support this the council has engaged, through a formal procurement process, specific technical, financial and legal advisors to help define the business case. This work required briefs to be developed and for those requirements to then be formally tendered.
“This work is seeking to define the activities which have been completed on the current Floating Bridge Six and what operational issues remain, including seeking to establish if those issues are implications of the ferry itself or broader technical, environmental or legislative matters which would impact on any replacement option.”
What a load of waffle. Look at the old floating bridge which is still in Gosport and build one the same. Simple.
Stop trying to go high tech, let’s have an old fashioned floating bridge that does the job.
Either that or cut some bits off the new one!
The Council were told right from the plans and drawings stage, that a wider, longer and therefore heavier floating bridge design would never work. The immediate problem from day one was draft issues. Of course those with all the shout and who knew sod all about what that they were looking at, did not listen, so now all we have is a £6m bouy and even that is bloody useless, while us mugs keep copping out for it’s continuous failings
I wonder who who signed off the new bridge as being acceptable and fit for purpose, on it’s delivery?
The mind boggles