The Isle of Wight is working towards becoming an Age Friendly community as part of a global initiative driven by the World Health Organisation.  It looks at all aspects of people’s physical and social environment and looks to support healthy, active ageing for everyone and access for all.  Read more about Age Friendly Island here.

We have committed to play our part in helping develop an Age Friendly Island by:

• Working to identify and deliver communication improvements that make our services more accessible to older people in our community
• Helping our staff, through training, to understand the challenges facing older people so we are considerate and respectful of older people’s needs
• Working with the local authority to promote an accessible public highway network
• Continuing to promote inclusion through our charitable trust – the Isle of Wight Foundation

Alongside our general pledge we have also made a digital pledge where we will:

• Endeavour to make our website age friendly
• Help people to use our online reporting system (Fix my Street)
• Provide an alternative to our online reporting system (email/contact centre)

You can find out more about Digital Friendly Island and read an information sheet

We have also worked closely with Age UK IW and their older persons steering group to develop a useful resource ‘Pavements for People’ which explores some of the common access issues people experience when using pavements and how to report them. You can read the information here.