Ferry news

CalMac fare concession for Oban

Martin Dorchester, CalMac’s new Managing Director, has agreed to an improved fare structure for the ferry service between Oban and Mull. Up to now, a 5-day supersaver ticket has been available at a 30% reduction, but this is to be extended to a 9-day supersaver. If for Oban, why not for Brodick? Arran’s tourism needs all the help it can get.

Passenger-only Dunoon-Gourock route

News of this unpopular change was withheld until after the Scottish parliamentary elections in 2011, and Robert Wakeham, who runs a good website called ForArgyll, called it ‘a shoddy little political dodge dating from the political stone age.’

New ferry firm for Orkney and Shetland

Transport Scotland has appointed Serco Ltd as the preferred bidder for the NorthLink ferry routes between the Scottish mainland and the northern isles of Orkney and Shetland.
NorthLink is a subsidiary of the state-owned David MacBrayne Ltd, and has been leasing its ships from the Royal Bank of Scotland. NorthLink staff will transfer to Serco under TUPE (Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) regulations, so there will be no job losses, but NorthLink will be brought to an end or, as the press release picturesquely says, ‘be confined to limbo as an empty envelope.’

The Guardian once described Serco as ‘the biggest company you have never heard of’. Its fingers are everywhere. It runs trains in northern England and the London’s Docklands Light Railway, though its only shipping line so far is London’s Woolwich Ferry. It supports Royal Navy ships in Scotland and runs Shetland’s Scatsta Airport. Oh, and it also supplies speed cameras. CalMac may be feeling a little jittery over the appointment of this many-headed giant to a Scottish ferry service. Is this the thin end of a Government wedge designed to break up the existing, virtually nationalised services? A battle for the Clyde may well be in the offing.