The Cowes Floating Bridge is haemorrhaging money and has cost the taxpayer a staggering £7.7million to date.
A Freedom of Information Request by the Floating Bridge Stakeholders’ and Engineers’ Group has revealed the costs behind the troubled vessel, which has only just come back into service after a 14-week suspension.
Between August 2018 and September 2020, Floating Bridge No.6 cost a whopping £2,548,987 to run but brought in just £1,373,388 of revenue, meaning the service made a loss of £1,373,388 in just 2 years – or around £55,000 a month on average.
The new chain ferry was commissioned in 2016 – under the previous administration – at a cost of £3.2million. It replaced the ageing Floating Bridge No.5, which used to make a profit of up to £250,000 a year.
With the Floating Bridge regularly out of action, the owners of the Jenny Boat have benefited to the tune of £155,694 with a further £62,040 spent on the water taxi.
Cowes Harbour Commission has received almost £250,000 for the use of the ‘Seaclear’ vessel, which is used to put the Floating Bridge into the correct position. Certain tides pull the floaty out to sea meaning the Seaclear vessel is needed to keep the chain ferry on track. This seems likely to be an ongoing cost for the foreseeable future.
You only have to take a gander at the dozens of pages of search results on Island Echo for ‘floating bridge‘ to see the plethora of stories about the service, which operates between East Cowes and Cowes. The service has been troubled since Day 1.
Council Leader Dave Stewart hopes to build a bridge across the River Medina by 2029, but it won’t be a replacement for the Floating Bridge.
One word incompitance!
Our Council lost our money yet again, nothing unusual there.
It’s a bit like The Track and Trace
Another TORY balls up!
Obviously you never took an exam in english
You obviously didn’t if you voted Tory
If Anyone Had Made Such A Public Lose Like This Well Sorry It’s Time To Be SACKED!!@$#*@$
So true, someone should he Accountable for this
That means all of the council
A touch of back hander syndrome here needs some attention
It will just get brushed under the table
I think you mean rug !!
As one, of many, forced to pay Council Tax I DEMAND THAT THOSE RESPONSIBLE ARE DISMISSED IMMEDIATELY. And that includes the top etcholon who have clearly been protecting those below them. Time for a very big change in County Hall is clearly well over due. You are hereby awarded the DCM, and just in case you do not know what the DCM is Don’t Come Monday.
It’s a bit like The Track and Trace
Another TORY balls up
Can’t they get anything right!
Nope
Thoes who made the decisions to sqander our money should be dismissed imidiatly, and their homes sold along with any other assets thay have,
Just who the hell do they think they are???…
YES AND YES AND YES!!!!!!!!!!!! Totally incompetent. What a waste of money. BOB SEALY DO SOMETHING. STOP ANYMORE OF OUR HARD EARNED COUNCIL TAX BEING SQUANDERED ON THIS MONEY PIT OF A DISASTER THEY CALL A BOAT.
Don’t just ‘moan’ ensure YOU vote this council OUT, next time around. the most corrupt, incompetent, and happy to ruin our lovely Island and standard of life here, by filling it with more and more houses, NOT for Islanders, but for main land over spill which the council are PAID to take.
Get rid of this vile Council next voting time.
The trouble is that it is not just the ones that you vote for it is the ones you can’t vote for, the incumbents of County Hall. These are the people who need sorting.
Why have Burness Corlett Three Quays who were the so called technical experts not been sued.
Not once have they made an announcement to apologise for there incompetence .
These councillors and the people running this council will never admit they have done anything wrong or take the blame for this fiasco as it wasn’t their doing, and why?
I bet they fully intend to pass the blame and responsibility onto someone else and not be accountable for anything.
Guestbert, where are you with your comments????
Still don’t understand how nobody’s been bought to justice for this terrible waste of taxpayers money
Brought
The floating bridge is sadly and frustratingly not fit for its intended purpose.
The council have placed an order based on either a consultants design or the manufacturers design, whichever it is surely it these people who are at fault.
Presumably if the council had placed an order that allowed recourse to the responsible party they would have taken them to task. The council owe it to the residents and tax payers to come clean as to the exact situation and where the failing lies and moving forward bite the bullet and commission a new ferry that was as reliable as the previous versions that were in service successfully for many years.
What I would like the answer too is this. Why was this £7.7 million not invested in building a bridge across the Medina? I accept the floating bridge number 5 may have come to the end of its useful life, having served for 40 years. It was at this point though, that a permanent bridge should have been built, rather than wasting so much money on floating bridge number 6. To me it’s just simple logic, unless I am missing something! A small toll could be charged for using the bridge (no more than currently charged for using the floating bridge), but at least a permanent bridge wouldn’t keep breaking down, have to be held in place by a boat when the tide is wrong, and a permanent bridge would carry higher volumes of traffic much more efficiently…. It angers me that so much money can be thrown away on a scheme like the floating bridge, then the next thing we hear is our council tax rates get increased – time and again!
ABSOLUTELY DISGUSTING. THERE SHOULD BE AN ENQUIRY. INCOMPETENCE AT ITS BEST BY THE IOW COUNCIL. WASTING OUR COUNCIL TAX MONEY. THEY SHOULD ALL BE SACKED. REMEMBER THIS AT THE NEXT GENERAL ELECTION EVERYONE!!!!!! DONT LEAVE IT TO OTHER PEOPLE.
I think you mean local election, which is next year.
Isn’t this IOW Council a Conservative council? If they can be replaced next year, so be it. Everyone needs to vote and GET THEM OUT!!!!!!!
Surely this is fraud, if I pay (council tax) for a service that’s then not provided, my money waisted and not returned. Get trading standards to investigate .
So us islanders have paid for this pile of crap yet we get charged the same as visitors to the island to use it surly that can’t be right
The Isle of Wight and it’s a fiasco with Mr Floatie McFloatface isn’t an isolated incident.
In Fleetwood, Lancs, there is a ferry which transports people from Fleetwood, across the estuary to Knott End. All was fine until Wyre Council decided to spend loads of money to ‘upgrade’ the boat to a more ‘fancy’ one. There, their problems started.
The replacement vessel cannot cope with the strong estuary tides, unlike the previous boat. Therefore, the ship is more ‘out of service’ than ‘in’. Locals are up in arms that Wyre Council has spent taxpayers money on a boat which is not fit for purpose. Sound familiar?
By my calculation 3.2m to buy means 4.5m loss. In other words if you could replace it with one that just broke even it makes financial sense to just throw the current one away.
Better still put the council on it first and then throw it away.