Work starts on new Uig vessel
It was all smiles in Turkey as the first steel was cut for construction of two new ferries commissioned from the Cemre shipyard under a £91m CMAL contract.
CMAL say that construction is progressing well at the yard, with the two vessels destined for the Little Minch still on target for delivery in June and October 2025.
The two new vessels will deliver separate, dedicated services from Uig to Tarbert and Lochmaddy, replacing the shared service currently in place.
At just under 95m long, the vessels will each have a capacity for up to 450 passengers and 100 cars or 14 commercial vehicles, which CMAL says will increase vehicle and freight capacity and ‘improve the overall resilience of the wider fleet’.
If the boats do deliver to plan, they will be in Scottish waters just three years after commission, representing a third of the time it has taken to build the controversial Hull 802, which was commissioned in 2015 and is now not expected to be ready to take up its Uig triangle route before the summer of 2024, when it will be nine years and over £110m in the making.
Scottish Government last month confirmed its commitment to the continued build of Hull 802, despite the findings of its Value for Money review which confirmed that, even at this late stage, it would be cheaper to abandon works at Port Glasgow and start from scratch with a brand new commission.
The delay of Hull 802 is just one of many ferry troubles the Scottish Government owned and operated ferry service is facing.
After a series of maintenance delays and service disruptions, CalMac was forced to issue its fourth apology of last month when their much heralded new ticketing system failed on launch, causing mayhem for passengers trying to book travel and retrieve existing bookings.
Opportunities to enhance ferry capacity are being missed, according to HITRANS and CNES Transportation Chair Cllr Uisdean Robertson:
“While CalMac has already employed the fourteen staff required to crew the MV Glen Sannox, which is still sitting in Ferguson Marine’s yard, they felt unable to provide the additional crewing to reinstate use of the mezzanine deck on the MV Hebrides, which had, for the first twenty years of the vessel’s service, delivered much needed additional capacity.”
Cllr Robertson has written to the new Transport Minister to highlight the opportunity of reintroducing the mezzanine deck, asking Scottish Government to cover the £816,000 additional staffing costs CalMac has said are required for the deck’s safe operation.
In his letter, he said that staff costs would be offset by revenue regained from lost bookings, currently estimated at £509,750.
“The net cost to Transport Scotland of reinstating the mezzanine deck would be £306,250. I think this sum is modest when considered alongside the further economic activity that will be generated from this traffic. Please reflect on the modest scale of this request as a means of increasing capacity and relieving pressure on the Western Isles business community, particularly our tourism sector.”
Cllr Robertson told Am Pàipear that in response to his letter, he had received a blanket dismissal from Mr Stewart.
In a further letter to the Minister, Cllr Robertson called for a review of CalMac’s ‘top, top heavy’ management structure and a commitment that senior management should be based in the islands and not in the central belt:
“There is little to suggest there has been any improvement in performance or outcomes in recent years, but the Scottish Government budget statements suggest that you have paid more while standards have slipped.”
