Is this a good use of our cash?

Sir,

The report on the Piers and Harbours Asset Management Plan and Fees and Charges – 2021/22, submitted to the Argyll and Bute Council Harbour Board meeting of December 3, 2020 makes interesting reading. At a time when budgets are tight and councils have had to make hard decisions about where to cut services, it is difficult to understand why the council budget should be used to supplement the funding of dedicated ferry infrastructure for which CMAL should be responsible.

The asset management plan allocates £10,335,000 for planned marine infrastructure works for the year 2021/22, of which only £1, 255,000 is devoted to multi-use facilities.

The remainder, £9,080,000, is mostly allocated to single-use ferry facilities, and a huge proportion of that is to provide overnight parking for CalMac ferries (to the exclusion of all other vessels); readers will have to make up their own minds about the merits of spending £4,050,000 for an overnight berth at Fionnphort, and £100,000 on a feasibility study for a breakwater at Lismore.

CMAL pay back around half of the £9,080,000 to the council through harbour dues for the use of council-owned piers, however, that still leaves a whopping £4 million gap in the required funding.

If past experience of other CMAL projects is anything to go by, the planned eight per cent increase in council harbour fees and charges up to 2028/29 is not going to cover it.

Fergus Gillanders, Kilmelford