MP Welcomes Road Announcement

Andrew Turner has today welcomed the news that the Government is set to proceed with a massive £364m investment in Island roads under a Private Finance Initiative (PFI).

Due to the very difficult state of the nation’s finances, a large number of public spending commitments have been axed.  All spending decisions made this year by the outgoing Labour Government were scrutinised carefully by the Treasury and details of the projects to be axed were announced this afternoon in the House of Commons byDanny Alexander MP, Chief Secretary to the Treasury.

Mr Turner agreed that there are some valid concerns about the way in which PFIs operate, but said that the need for investment in the Island’s roads was quite desperate and there was no other way to access the capital to bring about the improvements needed.

In May Mr Turner wrote to George Osborne the Chancellor of the Exchequer, outlining the case for investment in the Island’s roads and subsequently ensured the case was passed on to Danny Alexander.

Mr Turner said

“This is the first sign that the new Government is finally listening carefully to the needs of the Isle of Wight.  We all know that money is tight and many public projects are being axed.  However the Treasury listened to what we had to say and finally agreed that our roads were a high priority as they are in a desperately bad state, much worse than most other places and there was no other way to find the capital needed to repair them.  I also made it clear to the Treasury that the money already spent on preparing for this project would be wasted if it did not now proceed.  I now look forward to seeing the long overdue improvements to our roads actually happening.”

Isle of Wight MP Welcomes Road Announcement is a post from: Isle of Wight - WightBlog.co.uk

New Car-Free Scheme hopes to make the Isle of Wight  a ‘greener’ place to visit.

The brand new Car-Free Scheme, is the brainchild of Lois Prior, co-founder of the Big Green Island Project Community Interest Company.

Lois has spent many years working to ‘green’ the island’s tourism industry and was given the opportunity to spent time at the Isle of Wight Zoo’s green week, finding out about people’s travel habits while on holiday.

A map of the Isle of Wight was set up where people placed coloured stickers on places they had visited, or were planning to visit. The colour of the sticker denoted the means of travel, for instance, a red sticker represented car, blue for bus, yellow for train and green for walking or cycling.

“By the end of the week the map was awash with red stickers, even where public transport links were good” said Lois “people were feeling guilty about putting so many red stickers onto the map, especially in front of their children. When asked why they were using their car and not public transport, the answers were usually to do with convenience, cost and lack of information”.

The Car-Free Scheme hopes that it can overcome some of these barriers to using public transport. Island attractions and accommodation providers are encouraged to provide some sort of discount or other incentive to people who get there by bus or train, for instance discounted entry tickets or a free bus pass for hotel guests.

“What surprised me is that many attractions and some accommodation providers are already offering discounts as part of their green policy, but many failed to promote these discounts effectively, if at all. This scheme will promote any business that can offer an incentive to public transport users” said Lois “as well as offering information about island buses, trains, integrated tickets and places to visit without the car. The scheme has been kept as simple as possible. There are no vouchers or special passes. All you need to obtain your discount is your train / bus ticket or your Rover ticket. With a weekly bus Rover ticket costing just £40 for a whole family, I am sure that this scheme will also make economic sense as well”

The first to sign up to the new web site www.car-free.-scheme.org were Vintage vacations and Goodleaf Tree Climbing who are both offering discounts for public transport users. Within a few days of starting with the scheme, Vintage vacations has already taken three ‘car-free’ bookings.

Lois is also taking a good look at how the scheme can incorporate cyclists on the island, extending the benefits to even more non-car users. If you are interested in joining the scheme, please email lois@car-free-scheme.org or call 01983 220220 (leaving a message).

New Car-Free Scheme hopes to make the Isle of Wight a ‘greener’ place to visit. is a post from: Isle of Wight - WightBlog.co.uk

Introducing Drivex!

Drivex is an Island based business specialising in helping our clients manage their ‘occupational road risk’

What is occupational road risk I hear you say?

When a business or other organisation has staff who have to drive as part of their role, the risk associated with their road journeys comes under the employer’s responsibility as well as that of the individual driver. The employer has a legal responsibility to take steps to ‘manage’ that risk.

We work with our clients in a number of ways, such as:

Reviewing their current Occupational Road Risk position

Ensuring company’s ‘Driving at Work Policy’ is robust.

Providing driver profiling risk assessments – many businesses only check employees licences (and some don’t even do this). This is not sufficient in terms of carrying out a Risk Assessment (a legal requirement under the ‘Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999′ Over 80% of road crashes are caused by driver error, so the duty of care required of the employer should include driver assessments as part of their overall management of work-related road safety.

We provide driver training, with courses suited to each client’s needs. The most common courses we provide are:

• Defensive driving
• Eco-safe driving
• Skid control
• Trailer training and testing
• Speed awareness
• UK familiarisation
• Vehicle familiarisation
• Post incident training

Why use us?

The benefit of using Drivex is that you only use us when you need us, making your management of occupational road risk far more efficient and cost effective. For example, by using our driver profiling facility you can ‘risk assess’ 12 drivers for the price of 2 if this was to be done in-vehicle, plus they only need to take 30 minutes out of their day to complete each profile – bargain!

For more detailed info visit www.drivex.co.uk

Safe driving!

Introducing Drivex is a post from: Isle of Wight - WightBlog.co.uk