Dear Editor,

I read your front-page article last week, regarding a consultant’s report. The elected council members, prepared on instruction from officers, with utter incredulity. The article could not better support your recent headline, which asked, “Who runs the Isle of Wight Council?”

At the time I quietly screamed, “The bl***y officers”! They appear, judging from my outside viewpoint, to regard themselves as the true authority, totally contemptuous that it is elected representatives who alone have mandated leadership authority. Elected members have a duty to ensure their instructions are executed by officers, exactly as instructed; but regularly fail.

A classic example of officer contempt is the Cowes Chain Bridge. A council resolution was passed earlier this year to replace that ridiculous vessel – the decision formally recorded in council minutes. Officers, with self-assumed superiority, chose to ignore that and devised their own proposal, undermining the elected chamber.

Had an acquiescent chamber accepted that proposal, it would have resulted in further waste of taxpayer funding on pointless modifications. Happily, the elected members at long last grew some balls, rejected the officer’s contemptible proposal and reiterated their instruction to replace the useless vessel.

The arrogant officers then commissioned, and presumably somehow made payment for, their independent report; likely designed with the intention of discrediting members. How dare they behave in such a manner? They are public servants. They have no mandate to take such action, only elected members do.

The members, in my view, do deserve to be regarded with disdain by officers and electors alike, because they clearly behave like schoolyard infants. Officers do not however have the authority to commission reports on members’ behaviour, behind their backs.

Elected members are, sadly, a collection of seemingly petty minded, self-important, possibly well-intentioned – but grossly incompetent and unskilled – individuals. However, members have an electoral mandate. It is for the electorate to change that.

Roy Rigby, Ventnor