We have just today been written to by the council to tell us that the upcoming Waste contract, that they recently decided to spend £500,000 on advisors on, is not a PFI.
They wrote, “Firstly we should point out to VentnorBlog that at no stage has the Isle of Wight Council said that the new waste contract will be sourced under PFI. There are no government PFI grants for this and it will be funded by the council.”
Searching iwight we found the council calling it a PPP (Public Private Partnership) instead.
VB first referred to the upcoming Waste contract as a PFI a month ago, then in two further articles (we’ve amended them).
Didn’t exactly rush
Given how obsessively we hear the council check VentnorBlog, it’s a great shame that they have left it this long to let us know.
They don’t usually hold back when they think that we might have incorrect information on the site.
For example we once referred to the Ventnor Botanic Garden as Ventnor Botanic Gardens (adding an ‘s’) and received an email from the council press office an hour after the article was published, pointing out our error.
We’ve let you know as soon as the council wrote to us about it. It’s a great shame that the council didn’t use the same urgency.
Image: Chris Isherwood under CC BY 2.0
Update 16:13: Changed headline and a subhead slightly.
16:52 Rewrote intro to include council quote.
