You’ve probably heard officers of the Isle of Wight Council referring to £10m that they say the Isle of Wight Festival brings to the Island economy each year. Senior council officer, John Metcalfe, has even said that it could be as much as £15m per year.
Most recently, Stuart Love brought up the £10m figure when he was being interviewed, post-Festival, on BBC Radio Solent, quoting research carried out at Sheffield Hallam University in 2008.
Surprisingly, given it’s so often referred to by the council, the document wasn’t available on the council Website or anywhere else on the Internet – until just now, a week and a half after VB requested it, when a link to the document was sent to us.
What’s the breakdown?
Hearing the figure of £10m being freely-used naturally raises a number of questions about it – How does this amount break down? How much of the £10m that the council quotes comes to the Island is spent on accommodation?; How much spent in supermarkets on the Island and how much at the Island-owned shops?; How much of it is actually spent outside the Festival site?
Now we’ve been given access to it we hope to be able to break this down for you.
Same story with Emergency Safety Plan
Readers will remember that over two weeks ago we asked the council for a copy of the Emergency Safety Plan submitted by the Isle of Wight Festival organisers 120 days prior to the festival.
Here’s a quick update – Since publishing an article about the Isle of Wight council blocking access to the document, we have written a number of times to them but still not received the complete document requested. We haven’t even received the section that relates to Emergency Safety for traffic.
Covering all bases, VB also wrote directly to John Giddings requesting a copy of the Emergency Safety, but disappointingly, haven’t received a response from him either.
Islanders still angry
We had a pleasant enough time at the Festival and were lucky enough to not get caught up in any of the traffic chaos (or mud).
What surprises us is that despite it being a couple of weeks since the Festival happened, many of the people that we speak to around the Island are still just as angry about it.
By not quickly revealing background information, the council and John Giddings are making a serious mistake. If anything, it’s making things worse.
