We always welcome a Letter to the Editor to share with our readers – unsurprisingly they don’t always reflect the views of this publication. If you have something you’d like to share, get in touch and of course, your considered comments are welcome below. This by Martin Young from Cowes about Red Funnel‘s plans. Ed
The Red Funnel planning application regarding East Cowes will be determined this afternoon (Tuesday).
This application, if passed, has the potential to destroy high skill, high pay jobs in East Cowes, jobs which, if lost to the mainland, will never return.
Crucial to Island economy
These jobs, and other high tech jobs on the Island, are absolutely crucial to the Island economy, far more so than the traditional seasonal tourism jobs.
If these jobs are lost to the Island then it will discourage other companies to re-locate to the Island. This in turn will result in less revenue to the Council, which in turn will increase our Council Tax bills.
Looking at the statistics
I’ve been looking again at two of the documents that I have found on the Council’s own Website.
The council’s ‘Economy Report February 2012’, gives the GVA (Gross Value Added) for various categories of employment, and the official labour market statistics gives the number of employees in each category.
OK, so one is 2012 and the other 2014, and I can’t be to sure of the methodology used in placing jobs into each category, but I don’t think that will change much from year to year.
Breakdown of employment categories
What can be gleaned from these two reports is the value to the Island economy for various employment categories.
The Island Planning Dept, are quite happy to replace 150+ high pay manufacturing job with low pay Tourism and Retail jobs, so I did a comparison of the three categories.
Manufacturing – 12.4 (GVA%)- 8.6 (% of Total employed)
Retail – 12.9 (GVA%) – 17.2 (% of Total employed)
Hotel – 4.6 (GVA%) – 14.4 (% of Total employed)
This shows that Manufacturing jobs are approx twice as valuable as Retail jobs, and 4 and 1/2 times as valuable as Hotel jobs.
I do not know whether the GVA data takes into account the subsidies (Housing benefit, Tax Credits etc), which the low paid require to make ends meet.
Examining the demographics
Another report that is worth looking at is Demographics & Population Factsheet November 2015 which shows that in the age group 20 to 44 a decrease in population compared to the UK average.
“The Isle of Wight, like other seaside towns, is popular as a retirement destination. There is a net outflow of age 15 to 29 year olds as young people leave for higher education and career opportunities…”
If you look at the Population pyramid, you will notice that the net outflow should be from age 20 to 44!
I wonder if the planners ever read and understand their own reports!
Yours faithfully, Martin J Young
