The sudden cancellation of the IW Road Races motorcycling event planned for October half term is in complete contradiction to the previously announced decision process.

In complete contradiction to the IW Council’s stated position, two cabinet members have now announced that the race plan for this October is off.

I welcome the decision to cancel, as how can one trust an applicant organisation that up to now hasn’t even got a website, but plans to stage an event over ten years as big in scale as the current IW festivals?

The momentous decision to support the proposal of TT races coming to the Island ‘in principle’ seems to have been made in mid February last year in an informal IW Council Cabinet meeting.

We are talking of plans to bring 60,000 people in ten years to presumably camp en-route on the AONB and SSSI open access lands to watch up to 20 racers using fossil fuel engines with inevitable horrible fatalities.

How does this fit in with our UNESCO Biosphere Eco Island vision?

Cllr Dave Stewart tells me the Cabinet do not take minutes and none of the members could even tell me the date of the decision.

The officers were assured that the ‘decision’ would be followed up by a Cabinet paper but this has never appeared.

There has been no formal public consultation in written form.

Members of the public with concerns have been directed to express them to the mysterious race organisers alone, through an e-mail address, and not to the council.

How is it that such a fundamental proposal can be slipped past the public without any local public consultation, public accountability or formal democratic process?

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