Six thousand Hebridean islanders and millions of pounds of whisky and seafood shipments face transport turmoil this winter after crisis-hit ferry firm CalMac slashed its timetable.
Residentsof Islay and Mull will see services cut after Scottish Government-owned CalMac revealed that each island will be served by just one vessel instead of the usual two over winter.
The reduced services comes as CalMac grapples with a capacity crunch following years of underinvestment and delayed ship deliveries.
At best, the slimmed-down schedule will reduce the number of daily sailings to the two islands by as much as 40pc compared with the usual winter service.
At worst, engineering problems of the kind that regularly afflict the ageing CalMac fleet could spell weeks without adequate links to the mainland.
Distilleries on Islay fear that whisky exports worth tens of millions of pounds a week could be disrupted, while seafood producers on both islands fear shipments of oysters, mussels and langoustines will fail to reach clients.
The timetable reductions highlight the desperate situation facing CalMac, which has faced a six-year delay in the delivery of two new vessels from Ferguson Marine, which is also controlled by the SNP.
The situation has been compounded by the late handover from Turkey of a third ship meant to serve Islay, together with the scrapping of one vessel and the timing of annual maintenance work on others.
Haulage firm B Mundell has been operating on Islay for 50 years and serves all nine of the island’s distilleries, transporting whisky to the mainland and bringing in grain and empty casks.
Matthew Mundell, the business’s operations manager, is concerned that the winter timetable will prove unsustainable. “The ferry is a lifeline for Islay both for business and the wider community,” he says.
“Serving the island with one vessel leaves very little fat on the bone to mitigate against mechanical breakdown and weather issues that are commonly seen at this time of year.”
Anthony Wills, founder and managing director of the Kilchoman distillery, said previous disruption to the ferry service almost forced his company out of business.
Mr Wills said: “The whole of the Hebrides is affected by the ferry issues, but particularly here because of the size of the whisky industry.
“The infrastructure has not caught up with demand and it can be very challenging. With only one vessel and all of the distilleries operating flat out things would grind to a halt very quickly if anything went wrong.”
The concerns have prompted Jenni Minto, SNP MSP for Argyll and Bute, to call a crisis meeting that will bring together CalMac chief Duncan Mackison, council chiefs, community groups and business leaders in the biggest gathering of stakeholders since Covid.
Ms Minto said she would be seeking answers from CalMac about what islanders could expect in coming months at the gathering at Islay’s Gaelic centre on Monday.
She said: “I live on Islay so I share the same frustrations as everyone else. It’s not just a timetable or a ferry. It’s a way of life. We need to know what will happen before the new ferries arrive and what issue will remain after they do.”
Islay McEachern, the Islay community council ferry committee convenor, said CalMac should consider 24-hour operations if only one boat is to be deployed. It is already the company’s busiest freight route and set to grow further as two more distilleries are opened.
CalMac argues that is not possible because its vessels lack sufficient soundproofing to enable one crew member to sleep onboard while the other is working. However, McEachern believes an easy workaround would be to provide temporary modular accommodation ashore.
Islay will be left with a single ship, the Finlaggan, once the near 40-year-old vessel, Hebridean Isles, is sent for scrap in November after its certification expires.
The Finlaggan will itself be out of traffic for maintenance in the new year, with a smaller vessel taking over, something McEachern says will be unworkable.
On Mull, theLoch Frisa will operate solo to Oban on the mainland for extended periods.
Joe Reade, who heads the Mull ferry committee, says the Loch Frisa is too small and too slow to provide an adequate service. It is able to carry only half the vehicles and a quarter of passengers of larger vessels.
Reade resigned his membership of the SNPlast year over its handling of the ferry crisis, saying the debacle risked costing the party votes.
While Loganair flights connect Islay with Glasgow, the planes have little cargo capacity and the harsh Hebridean weather means the island’s airport has one of the worst cancellation records in the UK.
Alternative ferry routes from Mull, meanwhile, use far smaller vessels and deposit drivers in one of the most remote parts of Scotland, adding hours to journey times.
The service reductions, announced last week, mark a new low point in the fiasco surrounding CalMac’s fleet replacement plans, which have left Scottish taxpayers picking up the £250m bill for cost overruns on the two new vessels from Ferguson Marine, the Glen Sannox and Glen Rosa.
CalMac told The Telegraph that it is due to receive the Glen Sannox by the end of this month. The Isle of Islay, another ship, is expected from Turkey before the close of the year. Both should enter commercial service later in the winter, CalMac said.
A spokesman said: “We are currently planning timetables for both and will continue engagement with those communities in the following weeks and months. They don’t factor in the winter timetable because we had to plan with the vessels we have at the moment.”
Transport Scotland declined to comment, referring The Telegraph to remarks from SNP transport secretary Fiona Hyslop last Tuesday, when she told the Scottish parliament that a number of measures should begin to improve the resilience of the CalMac network.
Those include an extended lease on the Alfred, which usually serves Orkney, to provide emergency cover and the return to service of the Caledonian Isles, the second-largest vessels in the CalMac fleet. The procurement of seven small electric ferries has also begun.
Conservative MSP Graham Simpson, Scotland’s shadow transport minister, said the SNP, which has been in power for 17 years, is ultimately to blame for the capacity crisis.
He said: “You can’t look beyond them because they control every part of the chain, from CalMac to Ferguson to the procurement company that orders the ships, as well as the actual investment decisions.
“Really we should have had new ferries arriving every year so that the fleet is constantly being renewed.
“I have some sympathy for CalMac because they’ve been dealt a rotten hand. They’re given these vessels that are getting older each year and told to get on with it.”
