The public consultation organised by the Solent LEP on the revised business case for Floating Bridge 6 has been labelled a ‘spectacular catastrophic failure by the East Cowes Isle of Wight councillor.
Last October OnTheWight revealed the consultation had begun, with apparently little promotion from the Solent LEP.
Only 14 Island responses
A post-consultation report has been made public by the Solent LEP (embedded below for your convenience).
It states that just 14 responses were received from the Isle of Wight.
- One response from a stakeholder group
- Two responses from public authorities
- 11 responses from individuals A number of responses were duplicates (i.e. from individuals but have been included in an organisation’s response).
13 of the responses raised issues with the project and one response was supportive of the project.
Love: Incredibly poorly advertised
Isle of Wight councillor for East Cowes, Karl Love told OnTheWight,
“If you recall this is the consultation that was incredibly poorly advertised at its outset and so is it any wonder that just 14 responses were received from our entire Island population!
“The Consultation is a ‘Spectacular Catastrophic Failure’ and I wonder how much it has cost tax payers to produce this report?
“Such a response cannot represent any kind of perspective on which policy or future actions are based.”
Love: Island response is barely registered
Cllr Love goes on to say,
“Ironically the summary states “TOGETHER.STRONGER”. The report is far from representing ‘being together’ in any sense of the word and there is no strength or power that comes from an Island response, which is barely registered on any scale.
of an island representation.
“It’s not even representative of a damp solent squid! How can they even contemplate using just 14 responses to “inform the ongoing monitoring of the floating bridge 6 project”?
Stakeholders respond
A spokesperson for the Floating Bridge Stakeholders Group said,
“We submitted several hundred pages demonstrating that the floating bridge has hurt the economy and, in our opinion, the Council appears to have provided deceptive information to the LEP in their business case. 28.3% pedestrians use this floating bridge since charges were introduced (based on 2014 numbers).
“The Solent Local Enterprise Partnership funded a new floating bridge to help local businesses and the economy; what is the LEP’s answer and their solutions that will provide a floating bridge as good the last one, in order to prevent even more damage to local economy and businesses?”
Love: Shockingly poor example of community engagement
Cllr Love finished by saying,
Image: © With kind permission of Allan Marsh“The Solent LEP should be embarrassed by the production of this report and start the whole Consultation again and this time use strategies to reach out to the whole community to determine the real consensus of our local and Island community.
“It’s a shockingly poor example of community engagement which is then used to shape action future funding investments.”
