The Isle of Wight Council will press ahead with a plan to replace Floating Bridge 6, rather than modify the existing chain ferry.
Economy, regeneration, transport and infrastructure committee (ERTIC) members last night (Thursday) voted to ‘assess market interest around the supply of a new vessel’, going against an officers’ recommendation to modify rather than replace the current vessel.
ERTIC agreed to instruct officers to ‘procure a qualified company to articulate a high level requirement specification and invite companies to procure solutions’.
The motion passed spelt out recommendations relating to a new vessel, including it operating at a ‘minimum of five return crossings per hour’, it being at the ‘location of the existing service’ and a ‘focus on sustainability’.
It said an update report will be brought to an ERTIC meeting in January. At that point, a ‘formal decision’ could be made on the preferred option for the new vessel and beginning the tendering process before the start of the pre-election period.
The Floating Bridge modification recommendation was previously denounced by councillors Lora Peacey-Wilcox and Cameron Palin as a ‘direct attempt to undermine democracy’.
They raised the Alliance group cabinet’s decision to replace the chain ferry and Cllr Peacey-Wilcox, herself part of the Alliance, said it is running at a loss of over £1 million a year.
She said:
“Floating Bridge Six is not fit for purpose. Keeping it is a calamitous waste of taxpayers’ money”.
Independent East Cowes county councillor Karl Love previously said he was stunned by the recommendation, adding that residents experience the failures of this vessel ‘in real time’.
An ERTIC report presented said a modification of Floating Bridge 6 would lead to a ‘higher value for money outcome’ and is the ‘preferred option from the perspective of maximising the economic and social benefits of the crossing’.
Its recommendation to the committee stated:
“Notes that Option one (new vessel) does not represent value for money relative to the other options, is not affordable and would not satisfy the legislative requirements to enable borrowing to be taken for the capital costs of purchase for a new vessel.
“Agrees to recommend to policy, finance and resources committee to allocate up to a maximum of £400,000 to undertake further limited modifications to the current Floating Bridge Six for additional chains and funded from the Floating Bridge Settlement Agreement.
“Subject to approval of funding by the policy, finance and resources committee, give approval to proceed to procurement for necessary works to undertake additional chain modifications only.
“Notes and acknowledges the views expressed from the public engagement alongside the best-case findings of the economic and financial assessment outputs.”
When will our elected members actually listen to the general public? Scrap the “Wight Elephant” and build a bridge along the lines of the Yarmouth design.
About bloody time and no bodge job..let wight ship yard design and build it..although will be years before its in service.
Obviously, fixing the existing issues that were largely caused by greed isn’t worth the time when there is more money in backhanders and brown envelope deals for the councillors if a whole new ship is being purchased.
A common sense decision at last. It is a shame that by the time the next report now being requested from Council Officers is made available at the January 2026 ERTIC meeting, it will be nearly 2 years on from the Council decision in March 2024 to scrap the current vessel. Meanwhile the losses keep mounting up and the costs for the Pusher boat keep being spent.
I would have added two additional requirements:
“We instruct officers to precure a qualified company to articulate a high level specification”, in english we are going to pay outside consultants who are probably well known to the councillors a 6 figure sum to tell us what we already know, and all this goes against the advice of the council professional officers.The councillors should now sign a binding undertaken to be repsonsible for all the costs over and above what was suggested by the council officer.
This time LISTEN to advice you are told. NO bigger, NO wider so NO heavier. Or it will end up just as big a piece of useless shit as the one you blew millions of our money on last time
It is appalling, the amount of money wasted on all those ferries, when the best solution would be a tunnel..single lane, with a cycle/footpath.. traffic lights each side.
Buy Japanese
It does not matter how much “tinkering” is done to FB6, it was a badly designed vessel from the start and ignored expert advice from Southampton University who, after detailed studies, warned that any new vessel should be no bigger than FB5 due to the hydrology constraints of that part of the river.
To make matters worse it was built with poor quality components and machinery which were unable to cope with the conditions, it cannot do the work required so get rid of it now and stop wasting OUR money on your political ego’s