In response to OnTheWight’s simple questions about the road works starting on Undercliff Drive in November 2013, OnTheWight has been forced into a ping-pong exercise with the council whilst attempting to seek straight-forward answers to our questions.
The questions were simple
- Who at the Isle of Wight council gave the go-ahead for work to start?
- Who signed off the geotechnical design reports?
- Who at IWC saw the reports between the time they were produced and the landslip occurring?
It took the council twelve days to provide their first response. This we felt tackled only one of the questions – who signed off the design report – but didn’t address the other questions.
A lot of words that don’t answer our questions
In a very long response (which we’ve broken up below for ease of reading), Bill Murphy, head of planning and regulatory services at the Isle of Wight Council, told OnTheWight,
“Under the Isle of Wight Highways PFI contract, the Isle of Wight Council agreed to contract out certain parts of its responsibilities in its capacity as a Highway Authority to Island Roads, including responsibility for the delivery of several geotechnical schemes.
“The geological problems in the Undercliff area on the Island are well known to both Islanders and geological experts. At present there are no proven realistic solutions available that experts can agree would address the underlying ground conditions in the geological risk area. The Undercliff is the largest inhabited rotational landslip site in Western Europe and over the last two centuries over 300 reported incidents of ground movement have occurred there, usually following wetter inclement weather conditions.
“The Highways PFI contract was never designed to deal with the underlying geological failures of the island landform, it only seeks to address issues on the top surface – schemes referred to as geotechnical solutions.”
PFI contract “deals with surface issues only”
He goes on to say,
“The report for site 9 (along Undercliff Drive) made it clear that the scheme being undertaken was not designed to provide solutions for geological failures. This was designed to address surface conditions at the time and predated the landslip.
“The risks highlighted in the risk matrix referred to this broader geological risk, namely the potential failures downslope and upslope of the geotechnical schemes. The comments in the matrix that no mitigation was proposed reflects the fact that the schemes are not designed to deal with a wider geological failure at Undercliff.
Island Roads “responsible for developing detailed solutions”
He continued,
“When the Highways PFI scheme was being developed the council reviewed the bidders’ solutions in relation to the way that services, including the geotechnical schemes, would be provided through overarching method statements and a contractual mechanism for the development of solutions. This contractual mechanism left the service provider (now Island Roads) with the responsibility of developing detailed solutions – which they have done.
“The contractual mechanism also requires Island Roads to appoint a third party to act as an independent approval body (known as the Technical Approval Authority) which has responsibility to sign off matters including procedures and standards related to the ‘design, measurement and checking’ of geotechnical schemes. Island Roads appointed Mott MacDonald to carry out this role.
“The Technical Approval Authority is only required to contact the council in its capacity as a Highway Authority, rather than its capacity as a signatory to the various PFI documents, if approvals are needed when departures from design standards are being sought (for example, any changes to the design standards as set out by the Department for Transport).
“No approvals needed from council”
Mr Murphy finished by saying,
“The geotechnical report in question specifically identified that no departures from design standards were required, therefore no such approvals were needed from the council.
“Both Island Roads and the council have been working in line with the contractually agreed processes and will continue to work closely together to address the effects of the landslip.”
The other questions
If you’ve managed to read this far down, you’ll agree there are a lot of words used, but the response from Bill Murphy didn’t clearly answers two of our questions – ‘Who gave the go ahead for the work?’ and ‘Who at the council saw the reports?’
So we asked again and received this response,
“Although we have not provided specific answers to the questions you have repeated below we feel the detailed statement explains the sign off process, in particular paragraphs six, seven and eight.”
Being opaque can indicate something to hide
We looked at the original reply again, but still couldn’t find the explicit details we’d requested.
A further three times we’ve had to ask the council for straight-forward answers to our simple questions.
To make it event easier for them to provide a astraightforward response, we asked them to simply clarify that
1) No-one at the council gave the go ahead for the work at Undercliff Drive?
and
2) No-one at the council saw the design reports produced by Ramboll
Instead of providing yes/no answers, they once again responded with the original reply with the words “no such approvals were needed from the council” highlighted in bold.
The council’s resistance to providing explicit replies can only be read as someone being deliberately awkward or that they have something to hide. Why else would they not just answer the question in the simple way it was asked?
We’re still awaiting the simple answers to the simple questions, which they continue to block answering. Why they’re doing that – only they can answer.
Inside Out feature
BBC1 will be screening an Inside Out feature on the plight of those affected by the landslip tonight (Monday 8th) at 8pm.
The feature gives Islanders an opportunity to hear directly from Undercliff Drive residents about how the landslip and evacuation has affected them.
We expect it’ll be on iPlayer tomorrow if you miss it.
Executive decision imminent
At Tuesday’s Executive committee meeting, members are expected to approve a budget of £500,000 to reinstate pedestrian and cycle access along Undercliff Drive.
