Scottish Ferries Review - WHFP Editorial

Last week someone from Islay sent me an article from the West Highland Free Press (WHFP) after this paper managed to see (parts of) a draft copy of the Ferries Review. Yesterday I received the editorial which was published in the 20 November issue of the West Highland Free Press. Although Islay is not mentioned as such the editorial gives more insight into the contents of the draft Scottish Ferries Review which will be presented in spring 2010. With this draft report in mind I started a poll to ask you, as a reader of this blog, what your favourite (future) Islay ferry route is/would be. Please feel free to vote and thanks for your cooperation! Back to the editorial:

WHFP: Scottish Ferry Review - A Missed Opportunity. The Scottish Ferry Review quite literally has the word "draft" written all over it. We hope it stays that way.

The MVA Consultancy has prepared a bulky report for Highlands and Islands Enterprise and the Scottish Government. It is full of detail and historical context. But it is significantly short of good and workable plans to improve Scottish ferries over the next couple of decades. In places the review contradicts itself. It agrees that "every island should have a ferry service" but implies that improved ferry services are not as effective as other connections, such as air, causeway and bridge. Nobody will argue with that. Where they have been built - to Skye, Eriskay, Berneray and Scalpay for example - bridges and causeways have indeed proved highly effective. We must, however, assume that throwing a bridge or laying a causeway across the Minch to the Outer Isles is not at present a feasible proposition. And the day that Scottish islands get regular, dependable air services which can transport all of their passengers, cars, lorries and freight at affordable prices is also quite a long way off. Continue reading.....

At present, in the real world, ferry services are the lifeline connections for most of Scottish islands. The object of government and development bodies should be to improve those services, not disparage them. As the leader of Comhairle nan Eilean Siar Angus Campbell said this week: "It has been proved time and time again that when additional services are introduced in the Western Isles they bring in extra custom." The whole tone of the Scottish Ferries Review is not of expanding the services, but of what the consultants would doubtless call "streamlining and slimming down" ferry routes. We do not need to be reminded by stark graphics that it costs more per head of population to subsidise a ferry service to Canna, Eigg and Raasay than it does to subsidise the Ullapool/Stornoway route. We already knew that. But in the absence of a bridge from Mallaig or an airstrip on Raasay, what is the alternative? To depopulate the islands? And once again it has been assumed that such subsidies are bad or regrettable - look out Lewis and Uist, for smaller per capita subsidies are in the logic of that argument no more defensible than larger ones.

The headline suggestion in the report, that Oban should become the central if not only mainland hub for the Western Isles and that places like Lewis and Harris and the Uists should have only one port, is so silly that we trust they will be shot down in the first hours of consultation. If these notions are not dismissed at an early stage serious political questions will need to be asked. The "Baseline Report" on economic conditions and population trends, upon which MVA Consultants founded their subsequent investigations, stated what again we already know - that the islands have aging and shrinking populations. The last thing they need in these circumstances is to lose their connections to Skye and Ullapool or their ports at Tarbert and Lochmaddy or Lochboisdale.

The biggest disappointment is that this review does not open the door to a fresh look at such new routing proposals as Mallaig to Lochboisdale. The consultants were given a great opportunity for an imaginative reassessment of island ferry services. They were given the chance to recommend improvements which would benefit islanders and increase ferry traffic. They flunked that opportunity in favour of telling us how much it all costs. We wonder how much money the MVA Consultancy has just cost island taxpayers, in return for nothing of much use.