A councillor has hit out at the Isle of Wight Council leader’s regeneration ideas calling them too little, too late.
In a tweet sent last week, Councillor Dave Stewart tweeted: “We need to regenerate our county town, ideas to follow” and tagged the Isle of Wight Conservative group.
Bringing the tweet up in leader’s questions yesterday, Councillor Geoff Brodie, Newport East representative, asked whether Cllr Stewart was ashamed of his tweet, given that the Conservatives have been in power, with Cllr Stewart at the reins, since 2017.
Cllr Geoff Brodie said:
“Does [Cllr Stewart] not think that suggesting ideas will follow at this late stage in the administrations is an indictment of how little this council has achieved in terms of regenerating not only Newport, but the rest of the Isle of Wight?”
Cllr Stewart said he wasn’t ashamed of the tweet and highlighted ‘a great deal of things they were doing for Newport’, including the harbour masterplan and recently approved Harbour Revision Order, funding secured from the historic town funds and highway improvements, like St Mary’s junction.
He said:
“I feel we are doing a great deal for Newport. I would support any councillor who wants to see Newport reinvigorated after this awful pandemic and I can assure him if I sit in this chair in a few months’ time, he will have my full support on that.”
Since the pandemic started, multiple national chains such as Topshop, Prezzo and Pizza Express, as well as other shops on the High Street and around Newport, have disappeared as the longer term effects of COVID and the subsequent lockdown have effected the economy.
With empty holes now dotting the High Street, a number of initiatives have been proposed by local communities, which included pop-up shops over Christmas selling Island-made products.
However, there have still been calls to do more, including providing free parking in Newport for a certain amount of time to encourage shoppers into the county town.
look at that image of newport – hardly any greenland is still seen, which shows trees in place, that remove CO2 from the atmosphere and put oxygen back in.
it is just a disgusting display of endless concreting over more and more of the island, so that grubby hands can be greased with money, at the expense of the environment and our breathable air quality.
Well said and so true.
What happened to the replanting at the new junction?
Some tree and hedgerow planting has taken place. ( right time of year). The rest will happen once the ground conditions improve and it’s planting season.
I take my hat off to people like you who stick to their principles and keep clear of these concrete jungles, don’t drive cars and only shop at their local corner shop. Well done you.
thanks gullible islander – i do indeed shop locally, do not own a car and live away from cities.
Good for you.
You haven’t been on the island long then?
I thought the same of the image.
Absolutely agree with you Isle of Wighter. We really do need to drastically reduce the amount of and inappropriate type of building over our Island and start thinking about its’ impact on the Island environment. As I understand it this concreting over with disregard for heritage and green space has been going on since the 60s/70s. And for Gullible Island, I don’t always shop locally, I do own a car, I have lived in cities and I have lived here since the 80s.
So like isle of wighter you’re another overner moving here for a peaceful life and you wonder why they’re building more houses!!!!!
Yes they have to build for the s p o n g e r s and b r e e d e r s but overners are also to blame. Maybe when your family are 4th generation caulkheads then you can call it our island.
Gullible islander – I was born here.
Oh, bitter gullible Islander who assumes so much! I came to the Island for work reasons — 40 years ago!
No bitterness here as I have worked with and around overners all my life.
I say things as they are and won’t change my ways or words for anyone. You call it bitter, I call it speaking the truth. You’re not an islander, fact.
I assume nothing, I have helped build houses and care homes on this island and I can tell you alot of them were filled with overners during the 70s, 80s and 90s moving here for cheaper housing and to retire. Fact.
I’m sure there was tumble weed blowing through Newport High Street the other day. It does make a strange sound when is scrapes along tarmac and concrete.
The building in the bottom right of the photo needs cleaning out of all the trash that is in it and maybe someone could turn it into apartments make better use of it.
It wants all that asbestos removing (physically and metephorically) and leveling to the ground.
Can’t believe they just agreed to spending £550k of our money on air conditioning. Hope its not on this outdated dinosaur of an eyesore.
Highway improvements, like St Mary’s junction!!!!!!
What a joke, that guy is funny. He should look up the definition of Improvement because that definition does not fit what happened there in the slightest.
Now we are stuck with that f’ing mess for generations to come, reminiscing about how smoothly it used to work.
This so called council leader need to get a grip
There’s something not quite right there
Hopefully Geoff gets in and sorst things out
I doubt very much he would do any better!
Captain Pugwash took early retirement and is now in residence at County Hall.
Free parking ha
So park in scarots lane car park go to the backery around the corner and your time is up
Leg it back to the carpark before the trafic wardens slap a ticket on the screen.
Dave your words don’t work your not fooling anyone