Businesses on South Uist have slammed long-running issues with the island’s ferry service as “disastrous” for families and the health of islanders.
Rupert Marshal, a local business owner and member of the South Uist Impact Group, said the island hasn’t had a proper ferry service for the past six months.
“The economic impact of that is disastrous on the island economy,” he said.
Two years ago, he said the business group commissioned an independent economic survey that estimated that just a couple of weeks without a ferry was costing the island around half a million pounds.
“That compounded over time has a terrible effect not only on the economy but on families and health as well. We need ferries to access some health services, we have families spread across the UK including locally on adjacent islands and we can’t get there,” Mr Marshal said.
STV NewsThe South Uist Business Group called a crisis meeting on Tuesday and invited the Scottish Government.
Islanders gathered in-force to request a resilience fund to help the existing businesses, and a firm Holyrood commitment to both a new ferry and pier – both of which Mr Marshal said are running behind schedule.
“We’re also asking for improvements to the current, terrible service to Uist during this period of disruption which started back in January and is unlikely to stop before the end of May,” he added.
Scotland’s transport secretary, Fiona Hyslop, attended the group’s “crisis” meeting on Tuesday and said it was “very sobering” to hear about the impact of ferry disruptions from more than 20 local business owners during the island summit.
“There is a plan but it is important to hear what people are saying and the impact it’s had on them,” she said afterwards.
The Outer Hebrides, particularly South Uist, has been hard hit by ongoing ferry disruptions as the state-owned ferry operator CalMac faces ferry shortages and an ageing fleet.
The service has been continuously beset by delays and scandals in recent years.
Frequent, costly, and delayed repairs to CalMac’s current ageing fleet have caused CalMac to change sailing schedules and move ferries to different routes while delays in building the replacement fleet have caused separate issues.
As a result, South Uist is currently sharing a direct ferry that’s restricted to carrying just 45 passengers instead of 900, and it runs to a port 85 miles away from its timetabled port of Mallaig – taking passeners up to eight hours instead of 3.5 hours to cross the Minch.
“The service provided for South Uist has been declining for the past four or five years,” Mr Marshal said.
“We’ve engaged constructively with the government with CalMac, CMAL, Transport Scotland and other organisations, but we don’t feel we’ve had a constructive response.”
Islanders say the disruptions are not only damaging to the local economy, but also impacting on their access to healthcare and services on the mainland.
On the eve of the crisis meeting, Holyrood granted at least part of those requests – announcing a £4.4 million resilience fund to support island businesses during the ongoing disruptions.
Ministers have announced an extension of free ferry travel for young people.
From June, the concessionary ferry vouchers scheme will include those aged between 19 and 21, allowing four free journeys between their home island and the Scottish mainland each year.
Hyslop was also able to give islanders “good news” about the South Uist replacement ferry on Tuesday.
“I was able to tell the business meeting that the funding for the procurement for the MV Lord of the Isles replacement will be able to take place this year,” she said.
It must go out to tender, then procurement, then finally Hyslop expected it will take two three years for construction.
She also announced a tranche of funding for Gassay pier site investigations – which is the very first step towards replacing the life-expired mooring.
“It’s a welcome step forward,” Hyslop said.
But between now and then, Hyslop said CalMac needs to deal with some of the operation issues immediately facing islanders.
‘£4.4m fund is admission of failure’
STV NewsTorcuil Crichton, the Scottish Labour MP for Na h-Eileanan an Iar, said this fund is essentially an “admission of failure” from the SNP Government.
“It’s good the Scottish Government have come forward with proposals for £4.4m of compensation, but that’s an admission of failure of course that they haven’t compensated people adequately up to now,” he said.
“Hats of to people of south Uist who have campaigned for compensation I’m really glad they’ve got it, but we need to solve the root cause of this problem.”
He added: “That means proper governance of the ferries and the ferry companies and a proper ferry service for South Uist.”
However, SNP MSP Alasdair Allan (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) said the fund is evidence that the government has “clearly listened and clearly recognised” the impact of ferry disruption on businesses and communities.
Ahead of the meeting, he hoped there would be recognition from the transport secretary that there’s a “particular problem” on South Uist that needs to be addressed.
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