Mike Starke shares his concerns that changes being made to the Island by the current council, including sharing administration functions with Southampton, could ultimately lead to the Island losing its county status and being incorporated into Hampshire, as it was in the past – Ed
People who view nostalgia through blue rather than pink-tinted spectacles are often heard yearning for a return to Victorian Values.
Their convenient amnesia turns a blind eye to the 19th century’s slums, poverty, child labour, including child prostitution, and innumerable unpleasant and fatal diseases that were only treatable if you had the cash to pay.
Then there was that other agony for the Victorian Caulkheads; their beloved Isle of Wight was conjoined like a reluctant Siamese twin to the sprawling mass that was – and is – Hampshire.
1890: The Island became its own county
However, pre-20th century enlightenment dawned in 1890, when the Island became a county in its own right with its own local authority to govern its affairs.
Now, as the 21st century staggers into its second decade, this hard-won independence is under threat of returning our offshore autonomy to the Victorian-style mainland rule.
As with so many matters at County Hall, this is not happening as a result of a coherent and visionary strategy. It is more a result of a number of disparate – sometimes desperate – factors that are spinning us inexorably back into the black hole of Hampshire rule.
The Magic Roundabout of council bureaucrats
First there were the cross-Solent commuters. The Magic Roundabout of career local authority bureaucrats has landed a series of mainland mandarins on our shores to spend a few fleeting years in charge of an ever-growing number of posts that now make up the 32 seats around the table of the council’s grand-sounding Corporate Management Board.
The chief executive’s battered baton has passed through no less than nine pairs of hands in the past 13 years. The last three post-holders have seen two come from inner-city London boroughs and the third from Essex.
A large number of other senior posts have been filled by commuters, with the one winning the prize for the most miles to work hailing from Newcastle-upon-Tyne.
Mainland consultants
Then there are the proliferation of mainland consultants imported to fill the gaps in knowledge of the department directors employed from the North Island to “manage” rather than employ specific expertise to a given area of public service.
Thus, for instance, in that vital area of the council taxpayers’ finances, the former post of “county treasurer” is now “strategic director of resources”, masking the fact the job is being done by a one-man-band limited company from the mainland.
Internal auditing of the spending of Island taxpayers’ cash is done by accounting giant PricewaterhouseCoopers, who also act as financial consultants for the proposed highways PFI. Incidentally, they were also the auditors for the ill-fated Northern Rock bank.
“Mainlandisation” of council services and senior personnel
The PFI exemplifies a third strand to the “mainlandisation” of Isle of Wight Council services and senior personnel. The inexorable drive towards privatising public services nationally has seen more and more Island functions hived off to mainland concerns. In the case of the PFI, the parent company of the bookies’ favourite in the two-horse race for the taxpayer-funded contract is a multi-billion-pound French conglomerate.
The icing on this carved-up County Hall cake is the latest wheeze; hiving off, or “sharing”, jobs and services with Southampton City Council. Quite how the needs and aspirations of a rural offshore island dovetail with the priorities of a sprawling, industrialised conurbation to the north has so far remained a mystery.
The inevitable conclusion
All of these seemingly separate issues seem to be leading to an inevitable conclusion; that the administration of the Isle of Wight’s affairs will slide back into that Victorian Value of being run from distant Winchester with Wight District Council dealing with parish pump affairs over The Solent, while the fate of weightier Island issues is left in the hands of county councillors from Aldershot to Andover.
Nor should we be complacent about Whitehall’s enthusiasm for such a move. Already our masters in Parliament have readily contemplated part of the Island sharing an MP with a mainland constituency.
Merging with Hampshire
Given that, plus the clear indications from the ceding of powers successive County Hall incumbents have made in recent years, it does not take a great leap of the imagination to hear a cost-cutting local government minister like the current one, Eric Pickles, asking: “Why are we wasting so much money on this top-heavy offshore unitary authority, when it seems bent on moving more and more of its management to the mainland?”
The notion of a fixed link across The Solent, that rouses passions like no other topic among Islanders, is a mere shrug of the shoulder compared to the implications for the Island’s service provision and heritage, which are now threatened by the clock being turned back to 1890 and the Isle of Wight becoming, once more, a bump on the bum of the Hampshire Hog.
Image: © Ryde Pier used with the kind permission of Isle of Wight Historical Postcards
