Scottish Government ferries decision is a disaster for our islands

The Herald Scotland

17-05-2025

This is a cowardly disgrace and a disaster for our island communities. This is not the fault of those who work at CalMac, it is the fault of the owner of Caledonian Maritime Assets Limited ("CMAL") which owns most of the vessels and the owner of CalMac which operates them. In both cases the owner is the Scottish Government. 100 per cent. For many years. There are no excuses.
The CalMac fleet essentially divides into two.
First, a number of small vessels which ply the shorter more sheltered routes like Largs to Cumbrae or Portavadie to Tarbert. They shuttle back and forth sometimes singly and sometimes in pairs. They are getting a bit long in the tooth so they do break down rather too often but in general they are fit for purpose. They have a small crew who do not live aboard. They all run on fossil fuels.
Read more Guy Stenhouse
The Scottish Government has recently ordered replacements for some of these vessels from a Polish yard. As part of the Scottish Government's dedication to virtue signalling these new vessels will be electric. This will require infrastructure investments at every port to enable large amounts of electricity to be rapidly fed into each ship's batteries. Can anybody see the potential for a huge screw up in a few years time? What can possibly go wrong?
The real problem is with the larger vessels which go to such places as Arran and Lewis and Harris.
The new vessels which are coming into service are very large. The Glen Sannox, which is intended to ply mainly the Ayrshire to Arran route, which takes around an hour, is about 7,000 tons. To put that into context, a World War Two Atlantic Convoy Corvette escort ship weighed about 1,000 tons.
A ferry needs to be bigger because it has to carry passengers and vehicles but the comparison shows that vessels as big as the Glen Sannox are not needed for weather related reasons when going to Arran. In fact when coming into port a large monohull ship like the Glen Sannox is more difficult to berth than a smaller multihull vessel which does not catch the wind so much.
CalMac's big ships have crew which live onboard so part of the reason they are so big is that they have several decks of crew accommodation. In the case of Glen Sannox the crew is around 38.
The large size of the Glen Sannox and the Scottish Government's utter failure, despite having years to get it right, to ensure the changes necessary are made to the port at Ardrossan to accommodate it, means it currently has to run from Troon which is a longer route and less convenient for users. This is not progress. What the Arran route needs is smaller ships with smaller crews running more frequently from Ardrossan.
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If you want to read accounts with unrivalled levels of guff gathered together in their pages might I suggest those of CMAL or CalMac. The latest versions currently available are for the year to March 2024, a period before Glen Sannox, its sister ship or any of the other new larger ships from Turkey have arrived.
The accounts are rather interesting. You learn that a pension scheme which is explicitly described as "generous" is offered to employees. The employer currently pays 31 per cent of salaries a year into it. How nice. You learn there are now 100 trained mental first aiders amongst the employees. You learn that around 1,000 of CalMac's "Sea Going" employees are supplied through a Gurnsey based company. The simple but unstated reasons for the latter is tax avoidance.
If you look through the accounting cleverness it is clear that the vast majority, about £200 million, of CalMac's annual income comes from Government subsidy. This is a lot of money and will go up as the new ferries come into service.
CalMac's accounts say that the Company has a purpose "To navigate the waters, ensuring life thrives, wherever we are". I wonder what focus group thought that one up. How about replacing it with "To provide rapid, reliable and regular ferry services which meet our customers' needs in a cost-effective manner".
Our ferry services are costly, inefficient and ineffective. CalMac's monopoly, far from being extended, should have been ended. Each route should be put out to tender separately with the communities being served having a decisive say in what service is provided by what company as well as driving down costs.
Yet again the Scottish Government has funked a difficult decision. Who pays the ferryman? We all do. It is time for change.
Guy Stenhouse is a notable figure in the Scottish financial sector. He has held various positions, including being the Managing Director of Noble Grossart, an independent merchant bank based in Edinburgh, until 2017