“I was told ongoing maintenance costs had been agreed and that road closures would be kept to a minimum”

The fall-out from three months of disruption and frustration for residents and business owners in Gurnard, after Southern Water’s Sustainable Drainage Scheme (SuDS) was abruptly scrapped, continued this week.

As previously reported on our website, Woodvale Road and Solent View Road, where extensive work has been ongoing since February, must now be returned to their original condition.

The community is also questioning how such a debacle could have happened and how much money has been wasted – a figure which will doubtless run into hundreds of thousands of pounds.

Massive failures not initially admitted

Gurnard’s councillor, Paul Fuller has already labelled the project “an embarrassing, shambolic supermassive cock-up from day one,” and highlighted massive failures in communication and management.

Initially claiming long delays in completing the work were down to a “permitting issue”, Southern Water and IW Council officers finally issued a joint statement on Friday after repeated questions from the IW Observer. The statement admitted that following discussions with Island Roads, the scheme had been terminated due to “issues relating to maintenance costs”.

The company apologised to residents, businesses and public transport users for inconvenience.

Promises broken and poor communication

Paul Fuller, councillor for Cowes West and Gurnard, is a vocal critic of the situation.

He distanced himself from the joint statement, calling it “bland, corporate and insensitive”.

According to Cllr Fuller, Southern Water broke assurances made during an engagement meeting held last December. “I was told ongoing maintenance costs had been agreed and that road closures would be kept to a minimum,” he said. Promised improvements in communication with the community also failed to materialise, leaving residents confused and angry. Even weekly catch-ups, initiated by Cllr Fuller, failed to improve matters. “They were very necessary as residents knew next to nothing about the scheme, but even that failed to materialise effectively,” he added. Cllr Fuller also criticised a complete lack of project management which he says added to the chaos. A project manager should have been appointed by January, but no appointment was made, and critical permits for roadworks were applied for incorrectly. “Had the scheme been properly project-managed from the outset, this situation could have been avoided,” he added.

Keith Herbert, Southern Water’s engineering lead, blamed failed negotiations on maintenance costs between Island Roads, the IW Council, and Southern Water. However, for Gurnard residents and businesses, apologies and excuses have worn very thin.

Unanswered questions

Southern Water’s abrupt cancellation of the SuDS scheme leaves significant questions unanswered. How much money has been wasted, why was the scheme suddenly cancelled, when will reinstatement work begin and will the termination of this scheme jeopardise other planned Roadside SuDS initiatives in Cowes, Freshwater, Yarmouth, East Cowes and Binstead?

So far these questions remain unanswered.

In a statement Southern Water claimed they cannot give any information about costs until reinstatement works are completed, adding the expenditure was “regrettable, but a fraction of the maintenance costs we would be contractually obliged to pay if we continued”. Why the work was started before maintenance costs had been agreed remains another question they were not prepared to answer.

It is also clear these are not simply failings by junior staff. Southern Water’s CEO, Lawrence Gosden, who was paid £764,000 in 2023, and Director of Environment and Learning, Nick Mills, are named in key documents as members of the board with strategic oversight of the project.

Environmental and financial fallout

The SuDS schemes in Gurnard and elsewhere on the Island were designed to address concerns about untreated sewage flowing into the sea along with surface water during heavy rainfall affecting the quality of bathing water. The use of combined sewer overflows is “no longer acceptable”, according to Keith Herbert, but there are no alternative plans in place. Other projects in Gurnard which were due to be installed, but have now apparently been cancelled, were in Worsley Road, Albert Road and Woodvale Close.

The budget for the scheme is understood to be almost £3 million, at a time when Southern Water increased bills by an average of 47 per cent last month – higher than any other water company in the country.

What does the IW Council leader say?

Council leader Phil Jordan made his position clear. He said:” I cannot express my disappointment enough at this outcome. Whilst the companies throw brickbats at one another over who is to blame, our community suffers.

“I want to reassure residents that the council is not involved in any costs relating to this matter, which is part of a Southern Water programme to alleviate overflow discharges around our Island.

“The IW Council is working very hard to find ways that this can never happen again and we shall be investigating ways, specifically, of not accruing any new highway works into the PFI contract scope. This seems to be causing many of the problems we have faced.

“Meanwhile, we are progressing with a legal dispute involving our contractor over charges being made that the council believes are not allowed within the PFI contract agreement. ”

We spoke to one elderly resident who lives in Woodvale Road, who explained how inconvenient the work, which started on February 3 has been for her. She said: “My bins haven’t been collected from outside my door since they started the work, and it’s a long old road and a steep hill to push them to a collection point. I just can’t do it. I have had to get my daughter to come out to do it for me. And for some of that time we weren’t able to get past part of the fence which had slipped, so we had to go down and then come back up on the outside of the fence, then do the whole trip again in reverse to get back into the house.

“We had a circular letter a few weeks ago from Southern Water, but nothing since then. You hear gossip but you don’t know whether to believe it or not. If it’s true that they started the work without sorting out the maintenance that’s really not very good, I don’t think they should have done that. I got my newsletter from Paul (Cllr Fuller) today, he’s very angry too.

“I’m lucky in that I’ve got a little bit of parking behind, but it’s been very hard for visitors. It’s busy anyway here, especially at weekends with Gurnard Sailing Club, and it must have affected business badly at the Woodvale Pub because there is just nowhere to park.”

A contractor who was working in Woodvale Road also expressed his view on the situation. He said: “The whole scheme seems to be bonkers anyway. There are places on the Island that have real flooding problems, but it’s a steep hill and here the water would just run down into the sea. It seems logical that if you were trying to catch the rainwater you’d put gullies across the road rather than just down the side of the road, so I’m not sure what they were trying to achieve. It’s all a joke really – but unfortunately not a very funny one.”