We always welcome a Letter to the Editor to share with our readers. If you have something you’d like to share, get in touch. This from David Walter, author of Shalfleet Parish Blog. Ed
Re: Response from Island Roads to Steve Cowley’s meeting report on the seven week closure of Bouldnor Road.
Island Roads’ lengthy self-justification is astonishing. It didn’t need two hundred and eighty words from Island Roads to tell us the Bouldnor Road works are important. We all know it’s important.
What we want to know is why the details of the closure were sprung on us with no time for proper consultation and planning to mitigate the closure, leaving Yarmouth businesses cut-off from their customers, ambulances and other emergency services cut-off from Yarmouth, Freshwater and Totland, bus-users cut-off from transport, and an unknown amount of traffic running through Wellow and Thorley due to lack of planning, consultation and diversion notices.
A letter of excuses
Those were the substantive questions put by members of the public, Yarmouth Town Council and Shalfleet Parish Council to Island Roads but instead of a helpful response and desire to work with the community we got a letter of excuses, some of which are not in accordance with the facts.
At the Public Meeting, Island Roads stated that they had not discussed ambulance access with the Health Authority as to how ambulances would be able to pass. Now they say they did consult the HA (but see below).
Regarding the buses, Island Roads announced the closure through OnTheWight on Thursday 6th February for a major closure commencing on 17th February. One week for consultation and planning is not sufficient time.
The bridge
When Island Roads were asked by the meeting about the Yarmouth bridge and whether they had considered the issues, they did not reply.
Mayor Steve Cowley was quite right when he wrote “The issue of re-routing when Yarmouth Bridge is closed had not been considered”. Island Roads now say that “appropriate action will be taken”. Appropriate?
Failure of communication
In their defence of their behaviour, Island Roads write that they have spent “a considerable time during the meeting” and had a “mobile visitor centre” in Yarmouth on Tuesday morning.
That may be, but the mobile centre was there in torrential rain and gale force winds – not their fault, but this was all sprung on the community with just a week’s notice!
They say that they dropped seven hundred leaflets – presumably they did but we didn’t see any in Wellow, and many hands went up at the meeting from those who hadn’t seen a leaflet.
Many people in this community either don’t have Internet access or struggle to do much more than basic emails, etc.
Ambulance access cannot be negotiated
Finally, I would like to come back to the point about ambulance access, since it was the point I raised at the meeting. Ambulances are required to achieve proscribed response times.
It is not permitted for a road maintenance firm to negotiate with “the NHS” (which is what Island Roads say they have done) about response times.
See chapter and verse from the report on South Central Ambulance Service.
