The Isle of Wight council, under the control of the Independent councillors, plans to start charging all Pensioners to use the Shanklin Lift that links Shanklin Village and the town’s Esplanade.
Currently, Islanders over sixty years old are able to buy a £2.50 card that gives them free travel on the lift. The council have now said they will make all of the elderly pay to use the lift.
Surprisingly, the lift currently carries 82,000 passengers a year and even makes a small operational surplus that is paid into the council’s coffers.
The council says they will have to introduce charges as around £400k needs to be spent to ‘replace the lift motors and the walkway to it at the top of the cliff’.
To date, some Pensioners have not paid to use the lift, but are the most frequent users of it. Those without the card are able to get a discounted charge rate. The council plans to use the money raised by charging Pensioners will pay towards the maintenance.
Video of the Lift
If you never travelled on the lift, here’s a video from a member of the public.
Text from the council
Here’s the council’s text from the ‘Service Review of Economic Development, Tourism and Leisure’
The lift makes a useful link between Shanklin village and the Esplanade it carries approximately 82,000 passengers a year and makes a small operational surplus to the Council. Unfortunately it requires capital investment of c£400k in order to replace the lift motors and the walkway to it at the top of the cliff. The lift is most often used by OAPs who are not currently charged for its use. It will be necessary for the Council to introduce charges for OAP use to support the case for the required capital investment to sustain the lift.
Source: Service Review of Economic Development, Tourism and Leisure – Appendix A4 – December 2013
Image: ronsaunders47 under a CC BY-SA 2.0 license
