At last night’s Isle of Wight council meeting (see our live reporting), several members of the public took advantage of the public question time to raise concerns about the ongoing Cowes floating bridge saga.
Cllr Ian Ward, the cabinet member responsible for Infrastructure and Transport, informed the chairwoman (Cllr Lora Peacey Wilcox) that he had three written questions to answer and wanted to reply to them at the same time.
Review will address “perceived problems”
Replying to written questions from Angie Booth, Philippe Wines and Ms Tanner, Cllr Ward said,
“There is a significant amount of interest in this matter at the present time and we are actively working through the requests for complaints that we receive.
“Our main focus is to ensure that Floating Bridge No.6 will provide a regular and reliable service for the future.
“A commitment has been given to address the issues and opinions highlighted to us regarding the perceived problems with the design and delivery of the new boat, as well as a review of the way in which the floating bridge was procured.
“Findings will be published as soon as it is feasible to do so, however it is important that the commissioning process is undergoing and the council would not take ownership of the floating bridge until such a time as the operational issues have been resolved.
“In the meantime, and to ensure there is a means to keep members and residents informed of latest developments and information we will to continue to update the section of questions and answers on the FAQ section of the council Website.”
Who made it bigger?
East Cowes shop-owner, Angie Booth, said she wasn’t sure which question Cllr Ward was answering, so invited to ask her question in person, which was in three parts,
“Did any of the employees of the council warn other council officers that the bridge would be too big?
“Do you know which persons made the suggestion to make it bigger and then the decision to make it even bigger? Why did they make the bridge bigger? To fit more cars? Increase supply? Considering that many fewer cars have been using it over the last ten years. Decreased demand.
“And thirdly in order for the new bridge to be fully functional it needs to be 1) frequent and 2) reliable. Currently it is doing only three return crossings an hour on average. So it’s much worse than the old bridge and fewer people will use it. It is also unreliable and will continue to be at low tide with river traffic and fast tides with crossings.
“Will this bridge ever be as good as the old one on all accounts, particularly including those listed in the LEP’s document?”
Ward: Unable to give definitive answers
Cllr Ward asked the chairman if he could reiterate his last answer. He said,
“It was to deal with questions from the past, we cannot answer until we’ve had our board of Inquiry, as it were. Perhaps we can feed those questions into the board of Inquiry. We are unable to give definitive answers to those questions at this time.”
He went on to say,
“The floating bridge is in the commissioning process and it is not fully operational yet, we are still going through the process of getting it ready and making sure it is ready. It has been out of service for the last two days to undertake snagging tasks and things like that to get the boat ready for Cowes Week.
“And of course, to answer the question as to whether it will ever be as good as the old one, we certainly hope it will be.”
Why not a public Inquiry?
From the public gallery, Lois Prior asked,
“Why is the Council doing an audit with PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PwC) instead of a public Inquiry? If some fault lies within the Council (e.g. with the officers), it may be difficult for the contractor (PwC) to name and shame them if those people who may be culpable are their clients.”
Leader of the Isle of Wight council, Cllr Dave Stewart, replied,
“The way we have as an administration approached this is in two forms – first of all there have been a number of questions about costs of the bridge and we will deal with those in a carefully minded way, bearing in mind that the original costing of the bridge was under the previous administration – we are going to look at that again in our budget planning in October.
“The second issue – which is a whole range of questions which I think the public have rightly and probably concernedly asked over time – all those questions are going to be fed into the review which Cllr Ward has already alluded to.
“Our review won’t just rest on the audit of PwC – that merely gives us some information that relates to documentation. We will be speaking to officers involved, we will be speaking to other interested parties involved and they will all form part of a review report which will, as previously agreed, be submitted to our Scrutiny Committee in due course.
“All I would say to people is listen, we welcome the questions, if we hadn’t already thought of them ourselves they are other questions we could ask, but have said to officers that those questions need to be fed into the pot and not continually answered all the time.”
“Disproportionate amount of time” answering questions
Cllr Stewart went on to say,
“There is a disproportionate amount of time now that this council is spending answering questions when we haven’t completed the review. In my view, that is probably not appropriate.
“So we welcome the questions, we will include them in the review, but we don’t want our officers trying to answer each and every question without all the facts that we need.”
He encouraged the public to wait for the outcome of the review in the autumn and confirmed the review was being carried out by himself, Cllr Ward and Cllr Stuart Hutchinson (deputy leader) – the output of which would go through the officers back to the Scrutiny Committee.
Independent engineering audit?
A young person called Cameron asked a question from the public gallery,
“Who, as in which engineers, are assessing the floating bridge to say it’s fit for purpose during this final commissioning process?
“If it’s Mainstay or any stakeholder who hasn’t been paid by the Council yet, that can be a huge conflict of interest as they won’t want to point out any operational or physical defects.”
Cllr Stewart replied that the question was “noted”.
Cameron asked a follow-up question,
“Has there been an independent engineering audit? We were under the impression that the PwC audit would be investigating all engineering problems, and this would be done before the Council would consider purchasing the floating bridge.”
PwC not doing engineering audit
Cllr Stewart replied,
“So you may have the impression, but I’m not sure that’s quite accurate.
“The information of the review will take over six months. My understanding is that in addition to the purchase of the floating bridge, which in fact was being paid for by the Solent LEP, will follow normal procurement process.
“The council won’t actually take commission of the vessel until all the issues that are listed in the schedule have been complied with and there are one or two that remain outstanding.
“Our role as council members is – in particular – to look at all the journeys this floating bridge has been on and to learn the lessons and to find out if there was anything improper in the process.
“There are many, many experts across the Island on floating bridges who didn’t appear to have listed forth(??), but the fact is we’ll take all that information into consideration and try and give an open and honest and transparent answer.”
Confusing press release
There appears to have been a lot of confusion this week over the IWC press release published on Monday (see it here) about entering the final phase of commissioning.
Members of the public, as well some members of the press, all read it as meaning once Mainstay Marine had finished their snagging, the commissioning process would be completed.
It was perhaps this poorly-worded quote from the press release below by Cllr Ward that caused the confusion,
“We will be working with partners this week, including the harbour commission, and the Maritime and Coastguard Agency, to ensure that we are satisfied that all potential issues outstanding have been addressed and that it is deemed fit for purpose, in order to officially take ownership of the floating bridge.”
When is the sign-off date?
The final question from the public gallery during the full council meeting asked,
“We’ve had conflicting information from the council, is tomorrow the sign off date?”
Cllr Stewart replied that it was not true.
The resident then asked,
“What about the press release?”
Cllr Stewart said he didn’t have the press release in front of him , but whatever the press release might have said, the floating bridge would not be signed off on Thursday.
Public meeting tonight
Isle of Wight Council officers and councillors will be present at the East Cowes Town Council Meeting tonight (Thursday) to answer public questions on floating bridge.
The meeting starts at 6.30pm and held at East Cowes Town Hall.
