“We just want honest answers” — members of a floating bridge stakeholders group are asking the Solent LEP to step in to help the Isle of Wight get the truth as the fiasco continues into October.
In a letter to the chair of the LEP, Brian Johnson, co-signed by East Cowes Town Council, the Floating Bridge Stakeholders’ and Engineers’ Group (FBSEG) questions whether they can intervene to help the local community to save it suffering further losses.
The LEP fronted more than £3.7 million in 2015 for Floating Bridge 6, which has been plagued with problems since it was put in the water in 2017. However, the true cost of Floating Bridge 6, known to locals as ‘the Wight Elephant’, is not known despite repeated requests from interested parties, the FBSEG being one.
In the 5-page letter, written by the group, it says the vessel is unfixable and “taxpayers should not be facing the financial burden of a failing floating bridge that this council has ploughed good money after bad into, despite many engineers’ warning of major issues.
Cameron Palin, a member of the FBSEG and the council’s Floating Bridge User Group, said the letter was to make the LEP aware of the situation which had only gotten worse following a meeting held with all parties in June 2019. He said:
“The LEP has to consider what actions it can take — if it has jurisdiction to look into a task and finish group into whether its money has been spent correctly, how the council has dealt with the Floating Bridge and has it kept the LEP informed.
“We want to meet with the LEP to discuss the situation because the council is not telling them anymore. We have had professional mechanical engineers and project managers offer to meet with the council who have been turned down.
“We have all been treated poorly as a community and any way to have oversight of the council over this is to go through its funders.
Article continues below this advertisement “We just want honest answers — there are serious questions of the council’s ability to deal with this as they have dealt with it poorly throughout its three years in the water.
“Answers haven’t happened and potential solutions, such as side thrusters, aren’t viable.”
Despite assurances from the leader of the council and cabinet member for infrastructure and transport the service would be working by the end of September, the vessel will continue to be out of action until mid-October and the council hopes to have it fully working for half-term.
“We just want honest answers” From this council? No chance whatsoever of that. I suspect their rebuttal of this letter (if they even bother to acknowledge it which I doubt) will be along the lines of ” we are in the process of thinking about maybe possibly perhaps entering into legal action so we cant comment” thus covering their butts and incompetence nicely.
I think LEP who granted the money (as i’ve said before) must be appalled and embarrassed at this fiasco as it has done exactly the opposite of what the funding was provided for. If I were them I would never ever grant any further money to this Island whilst it is administered by the current incumbents.
Ensure instead of just moaning on here, that you ALL vote this council out next time.
They are ruining the Island for their gain, NOT ours.
Incompetent and likely corrupt, we can do no worse.
Ensure you vote them out when we get the chance.
Replace them with who ? There is No one any better to vote for .
We can only guess how bad others might be. We already know for certain how bad these are. The sooner we are rid of the lot of them, the better
I think this council must go down in the history of the Isle of Wight as the most inept collection
of people ever to run the Island. Are they corrupt i don’t think so but generally just not
bright enough to think outside the box. Every year they talk about making cuts then they come
out with ridiculous ideas that end up costing us millions. As mentioned when the elections come
out even though i am a tory get these conservatives out. Remember also that up to 16% of our
council tax goes to paying council employees pensions.
I have been wondering about the Council, and it was printed out that d steward, the leader, was only a senior policeman. So what other qualifications has he?.
As I recall it was one councillor that decided on a bigger better floating bridge and chose that one. Obviously knowing very little about boats tides and water.. Is it not the exact same councillor that told them to get rid of St Mary’s roundabout? Another waste of millions… Coppin’s Bridge is not so busy now… no, because traffic is tailed back to Northwood most days !!
All the millions that have been wasted could have better been used to build a nice bridge further up the Medina so drivers could by pass ugly Newport. I dislike Newport, and cannot understand why they want everything built there, or why traffic has to go through Newport to get across this Island. In my view Newport as I said is the ugliest and seems filthiest town on this Island, fronted with the old awful looking council offices, which should have been bulldozed years ago.
When bulldozing the council offices, can we make sure that the current useless bunch of members, who are supposed to reflect the will of the people they represent, are all in there at the time?
Sink the pile of scrap and have done with it