Opinion – put false hopes aside and take a joined-up approach to Dunoon and Kilcreggan ferries

Two communities, only a few miles away from each other by boat, have both frequently voiced serious concerns about their publicly-subsidised ferry services.

The council owns both the piers, and ferries from each go to the same place – so the local politicians will try to sort out both problems together, right?

Wrong, as far as Argyll and Bute Council is concerned.

Last week the council formally agreed that the Dunoon to Gourock ferry service ‘is not suitable and needs to be enhanced’.

Similar comments – and often less polite – have often been made of Kilcreggan’s ferry service since Clydelink took over the contract in 2012, but inquiries about whether the council would address Kilcreggan’s ferry to Gourock at the same time were met with apparent surprise.

These inquiries should be addressed to Transport Scotland (which is responsible for the Dunoon route), was the first response; then the advice was that questions about future procurement for the Kilcreggan ferry should be directed to the provider of that service – ask anyone, in fact, apart from the council.

That provider they refer to is partly the council itself though, since it’s one of the partners in Strathclyde Partnership for Transport – paying over £600,000 to SPT last year despite planning widespread cuts in its own core services.

So why the apparent awkwardness? Why not try to solve both problems together, since new contracts for both ferries are due to come into force within six months of each other in 2017?

A triangular service between Gourock, Dunoon and Kilcreggan seems like common sense to many people, with great potential to benefit the local economy which the council forever says is its main priority, but this option seems never to even been considered by the powers that be.

Instead, the council clings to its belief that everything should be driven by the need to restore the vehicle ferry to Dunoon town centre – this was lost several years ago because the EU said the public should not fund an alternative to Western Ferries’ successful commercial service.

So council leader Dick Walsh – a Dunoon resident – released a statement saying they would work with Transport Scotland to ‘enable the procurement of an acceptable (i.e. passengers and vehicles) service that meets the needs of people in Dunoon and the wider Cowal area.”

There’s one  problem with this – ferry operators seem very far from keen to take on the vehicle element of the service,

The report on which the council based its high profile announcement last week made no mention at all of a study by Transport Scotland only a year ago, in which six firms were asked if they would bid for such a service – only one said it would do, and then on the proviso that the taxpayer bore the financial risk of the vehicle service.

Current operators Argyll Ferries, Clyde Marine, GSS, P&O, Serco and Western Ferries were all asked their views – interestingly, the current operators of the Kilcreggan route Clydelink appear not to have been invited to take part – and the reasons for their reluctance included financial risk, lack of potential market share because of Western Ferries and accountancy headaches in separating the costs and income from passengers and vehicles.

The full report is here: A8671196

Facts such as these are not going to get in the way of the council’s opinion though, so the opportunity to take a joined-up approach to the problems with Dunoon and Kilcreggan ferries has been ignored – and the ‘wider Cowal area’ is defined in such a Dunoon-centric way that the pier at Blairmore isn’t even mentioned.

The council says it wants ‘the best chance of reliable service’ for Dunoon; clinging to false hopes of car ferries can only serve as a distraction when an all-encompassing solution for the whole area is needed.