The Scottish Government is still willing to talk to SPT about taking over the Kilcreggan to Gourock ferry service, a minister confirmed this week.
Speaking at the Scottish Cabinet’s visit to Greenock, Infrastructure, Investment and Cities Secretary Keith Brown said there may be advantages in Transport Scotland running the service, which has been surrounded by controversy since Clydelink took over the contract in 2012.
But he said of SPT: “They are not for us taking over that service.”
At Monday night’s event Jamie Black, vice-chair of Cardwell Bay and Greenock West Community Council, asked why the Kilcreggan ferry had received little attention from ministers compared to Dunoon’s ferry, which has seen personal interventions from Nicola Sturgeon.
He said he thought it at risk despite it being ‘a lifeline for those communities’; the community council is writing to the Transport Minister to ask why he did not consider including the option of bundling the Kilcreggan ferry with Dunoon when retendering for that, given they are only one year apart – a strategy advocated here earlier this year.
The ferry discussion starts after 31 minutes of the YouTube clip below:
Mr Brown said at the Greenock meeting that he wasn’t passing the buck on the Kilcreggan ferry: “In response to some representation that we have had it we have made the offer not just to SPT, but also to Argyll and Bute, Orkney and Shetland who also run their own services, that if there are any services they would like us to take over we would be more than willing to discuss that.
“I have written, some time ago now actually, to SPT on that issue and they are not for us taking over that service. That is their democratic right.
“We remain willing to talk to SPT about any request that they might have for us to take over a service, and it may be that there are advantages in that, because we are bundling together quite a lot of services and it may be there are economies of scale in relation to that.”
Mr Brown said SPT represented democratically elected councils and it would be wrong for his officials to take over a service without the councils’ consent.
This public position by a government minister, at a high-profile event which is available via an official YouTube channel, directly contradicts statements by Argyll and Bute’s representative on SPT, Robert MacIntyre, who said earlier this year that SPT didn’t need to subsidise the service, adding: “We have asked the Scottish Government to take this over – they don’t want it.”
Local MSP Jackie Baillie has repeatedly called for Transport Scotland, which is responsible for dozens of ferry routes across the west coast, to take over the service, but encountered repeated resistance from SPT.
I don’t know anyone who thinks SPT is fit to run anything more complicated than a whelk stall and they’ve demonstrated repeatedly that they as an organisation have nothing but contempt for ferry users; a petition and letter writing campaign is required.