Following the news broken by OnTheWight earlier this week that Isle of Wight council director, Stuart Love is planning to break up the highly respected Coastal Management Team, the Isle of Wight Association of Local Councils has joined Ventnor Town Council in expressing their concern at the plans.
IWALC Secretary, John Medland, has written to council leader David Pugh (see his letter embedded below for you convenience) urging him to reconsider the “restructuring of the Coastal Management Team which would lead to the disbanding of this critical staff group”.
Deletion of Principal Engineer post
He was responding to the news that Coastal Management Team would be lost in its current format from April 15th with the Principal Engineer being made redundant and other officers allocated to different departments.
At Wednesday’s last full council meeting, Cllr Chris Welsford asked the leader of the council whether he was happy with delegated decisions being made about the deletion of the Principal Engineer post and breaking up of the Coastal Management Team.
Cllr Pugh replied, “Members of this council lead the authority and officers of the council run the authority.”
He said he was very comfortable with the policy framework, and that implementation of HR policies is left to officers to undertake.
Pugh: “More coastal protection … than we’ve had in years”
The leader went on to say that far from coastal protection being abolished from the council, under the highways PFI scheme, “there’ll be more coastal protection and stabilisation schemes than we’ve had in many, many years or probably ever before.”
He added that he was “very comfortable” that a senior director in the authority was “undertaking a re-structuring to ensure coastal management function is fit for purpose in the future.”
Image: © Used with permission of Ian Pacey
