Warnings ignored
Sir, I note with great interest the comments of the CalMac interim managing director, Robbie Drummond, in last week’s Banner, warning that passengers are facing widespread disruption on Scotland’s ferry network and attributing the cause to potential breakdowns and delays due to its increasingly ageing fleet.
This problem has not just suddenly arisen; any study of the rate of build of the larger vessels shows an undeniable decline in the vessels per annum entering the fleet in the last 11 years.
For the communities concerned, their economies and their visitors, it is the consequences of an ageing fleet that are the real concern, and they are twofold – it causes both capacity issues and mechanical unreliability. Sufficient capacity to meet demand and reliability are key.
Unreliability for extreme weather is understandable and we live with it. Unreliability and lack of capacity caused by neglect and lack of investment – and even worse, bad investment using public funds – is not acceptable.
The present fleet is nowhere near sufficient to allow for breakdowns or a properly managed and necessary annual dry docking maintenance programme and other unforeseen contingencies. It is incontrovertible that the older the vessels, the more maintenance required thus more down time and more expense. The fleet is almost certainly two large vessels short to meet today’s needs over and above the two currently in build.
Mr Drummond correctly addresses the distinction between CalMac and CMAL, the former being the operators and the latter the owners of the vessels and ports. However what is critical but seldom understood is that both are bound to seek the approval of Transport Scotland (TS) and thus effectively the approval of the Transport Minister.
It is with TS that the causes of all of the problems lie, not with the operators. But it was CalMac who took on the recently-let eight-year contract knowing the state of the fleet and the increasing demand – it is coming back to bite it already and to that extent it is complicit.
Future ferry projects must learn quickly from the mistakes in concept, management, and scope of the current costly Brodick to Ardrossan and Uig triangle projects with possible final costs in the region of £200m. No part of these projects has run to schedule with the ‘state of the art’ but totally unnecessary overpriced and untested gas-driven vessels delayed by up to two years. In that time at least three or possibly four conventional vessels could have been in service.
Mr Drummond, in his upfront ‘new broom’ approach merely forewarns the traveller, but this does nothing to resolve the problems, namely the fleet age and size.
Yours Neil Arthur Kilpatrick