For Argyll

Information received today from Jamie McGrigor MSP has led Colonsay residents to an official website, with details of the controversial decision to exclude Colonsay from subsidised ferry fares. The new subsidies will apply to Western Isles with Coll & Tiree from autumn 2008 and is described as “RET” or “Road-Equivalent Tariff”.

From this government website, it has now become clear that there was never any intention to include Colonsay, nor even to consider it, as is highlighted by two crucial tables. Table 2.2 purports to show “Current Fares” on CalMac routes – notably, Colonsay is the only route to have been excluded from the study. More to the point, Table 2.3 purports to show “Fares per Mile” – once again, Colonsay has been excluded, in spite of the fact that the cost per mile to Colonsay is dramatically unfavourable compared with any other route. This fact has been brought to the attention of the relevant authorities in various submissions by Colonsay Community Council, so must have been known to Halcrows, the consultants and authors of this report.

Elsewhere, Halcrows identify fare reductions of up to 53% and state that “if one or more routes was excluded then this would lead to displacement across the routes”; this is a point with which Colonsay residents agree, since they fear that undecided visitors will go to Coll and Tiree instead. The consultants warn that there is a danger of subsidy causing “temporary capacity constraints”; this would not have been a problem for Colonsay, where no such constraint has been recorded since the withdrawal of MV “Columba”. In order to keep costs down, the consultants suggest that “RET” should be restricted to the longer routes, but they failed to even consider the route to Colonsay, the most isolated community in Great Britain.

The cost of including Coll and Tiree in the “RET” scheme is put at £731,000 per annum, assuming that there is no increase in traffic. On this basis, and had they troubled to consider the island at all, Colonsay could have been included for £200,000. Since Colonsay has great scope for additional third-party traffic, and has businesses which are unable to develop because of the existing fare structure, there would have been a great increase in carryings. Halcrows did not include Colonsay in their submission, but conservative estimates suggest that the total cost of including Colonsay in the project would have been in the region of £50,000.

Colonsay has already lost 3 households within the current six-week period, including four children, and another two households are preparing to leave. Nobody can predict what will happen next, but anxious residents fear that £50,000 may seem to be a paltry saving if it leads to the death of the community.

For more detail, see http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Transport/ferries-ports-canals/14342/TARIFF