Ministers have 'breached' a policy to replace ferries at the end of their working life - as it emerged plans to deliver some of a new wave of lifeline vessels has been put off by at least four years.

Concerns have surfaced that four of the 'loch class' ferries planned for Scotland's islands as part of the £160m Small Vessel Replacement Programme (SVRP) were due to be delivered by at least 2022 - but have not.

Meanwhile, it has emerged that ministers have failed to deliver on an 11-year-old policy to replace ferries when they reach around 30 years old.

Fourteen of Scotland's west coast ferry fleet are 30 years old or over with the oldest being MV Isle of Cumbrae at 47-years-old.

According to the 2012 ferries plan produced by the Scottish Government's Transport Scotland agency - investment to replace two of the vessels was due by 2019 - but has not materialised.  The vessels were Loch Linnhe and Loch Riddon.

The plan said there a "need" for four 'loch class' vessels to be replaced between 2015 and 2022.

It has emerged that the government-owned ferry owning and procurement agency Caledonian Maritime Assets Ltd admitted in a 2020 version of its three-year corporate plan that plans to develop a ten-year vessel and harbour capital and funding plan in line with the 2012 ferries plan and the ship replacement strategy was problematic.

It states: "Insufficient funding is available to enable the sufficient replacement of the vessel fleet and harbour infrastructure."

It added: "A fleet of ferries is available to service the Clyde and Hebrides routes and the associated harbour infrastructure is modern and as new and efficient as possible."

The Herald: MV Loch Riddon was due to be replaced by 2019.

CMAL has stated in recent public events it has hosted surrounding the procurement of the new wave of smaller ferries that the first vessel is provisionally expected to be delivered between July and August of 2026 with the last due in the last three months of 2028.

That was before spending plans to replace ferry operator CalMac's ageing fleet of small ferries was pushed back by a year, saving £41m.

Finance Secretary Shona Robison advised MSPs that a spend on the small vessels replacement plan had been "reprofiled" to 2024/25 rather than this financial year.

Updated timescales in the Scottish Government's own infrastructure investment plan update in September, 2021 said that the seven ferries would serve island communities by 2026.

The Herald understands that in August CMAL was finally expecting the first questionnaire stage of the procurement process to begin this month. It has yet to start.

CMAL-hosted events over August and September in relation to the ferries programme recognised there were financial pressures.

In stating that the project was in "development phase"  CMAL stated: "Given wider pressures on public funding, resources to take forward the SVRP have yet to be confirmed. This may impact the planned timeline to take forward procurement."

Transport minister Fiona Hyslop told MSPs last week that the programme is "progressing well" and that CMAL confirmed "it remains on track, with the outline business case for phase 1 nearing completion, before it moves into the procurement phase".

The Herald: Minister Fiona Hyslop and MSP Kenneth Gibson

CMAL said in February, 2021 that the "strategic business case for phase 1 of the programme was approved in late 2020 by the Transport Scotland Investment Decision-Making (IDM) Board".

At that point CMAL identified that replacements for MV Loch Linnhe, MV Loch Riddon, MV Loch Fyne, MV Loch Dunvegan and MV Loch Tarbert were all within that phase 1 programme and that it was "on course to move to procurement in the next 12 months".

Scotland's lifeline services has been dogged with issues with the delivery of the larger ferries Glen Sannox and Glen Rosa still not online after being due to be available for passengers in first half of 2018 when shipyard firm Ferguson Marine. With both now due to serve Arran, they are getting on for six years late and the last estimates suggest the capital costs of delivery could have more than quadrupled from the original £97m cost.

The two ferries for Scottish Government-owned CalMac were ordered in 2015 when Ferguson Marine was owned by Jim McColl's Clyde Blowers Capital firm, then a pro-independence businessman who rescued the Inverclyde shipyard firm from administration a year earlier.

When the build ran into trouble, the shipyard firm fell into insolvency in August, 2019 and was nationalised with Mr McColl and CMAL blaming each other for the fiasco.

Loss-making and now state-owned Ferguson Marine (Port Glasgow) had pinned hopes on heavy involvement in the contract from the Scottish Government's Transport Scotland agency for the replacement of smaller vessels serving the Clyde & Hebrides Ferry Services (CHFS).

The new wave of vessels were due to replace a host of over 30s vessels. They are the 37-year-old MV Loch Striven on the Oban to Lismore route, 37-year-old MV Loch Riddon on Largs to Cumbrae, 37-year-old MV Loch Linnhe, the relief vessel, 36-year-old MV Loch Ranza on Tayinloan to Gigha, 32-year-old MV Loch Dunvegan on Colintraive to Rhubodach, 32 year-old MV Loch Fyne on Mallaig to Armadale and 31-year-old MV Loch Tarbert on Tobermory to Kilchoan.

The Herald: Ferguson Marine, Port Glasgow..

The ferries are due to be electric motor-powered modern versions of the three 42m hybrid vessels Ferguson Marine built successfully, on-time and on-budget before nationalisation, between 2012 and 2015.

The Herald previously revealed that the Ferguson Marine board admitted a lack of financial support from ministers has cast a "significant doubt" on the firm's future.

The FMPG directors pointed to a failure to get a committed investment of £25m from Scottish Government to support future work at the Inverclyde yard, including the small ferry project after the delivery of two long-delayed and over-budget ferries.

The Scottish Government ferry replacement policy emerged as ferry users raised concerns about delays over the procurement.

One ferry user group official said he was "shocked" that ministers had "reneged on a policy" over ferry replacement.

"It is one thing to have Glen Sannox and Glen Rosa so massively delayed, that is one thing, but to have a longstanding plan for ferry replacement and a policy and then just seemingly breach that, meaning that we are in the mess we are in with this ageing ferry fleet is quite another. It is totally unacceptable."

Stephen McCabe, leader of the Inverclyde Council said that if Ferguson Marine had been given the contract for the smaller vessels instead of the larger ships, the shipyard firm would not have got gone bust.

"Clearly when the Scottish Government facilitated the acquisition of Ferguson's by Clyde Blowers Capital in 2014 there was a desire on the part of the Government, which I very much supported, to award the yard a contact that would provide continuity of employment for the existing workforce while Clyde Blowers developed their long-term plans for the yard.

"Unfortunately, the contract they were awarded was too big and too complicated for a yard that had been used to building much smaller vessels. Ultimately this proved to be the wrong contract at the wrong time for the yard, leading directly to it going into administration again.

"If the Government had awarded the yard a contract for smaller ferries in 2014 the outcome could have been very different.

"Nine years on the Government has the opportunity once again to secure a long-term future for the yard."

The 2012 ferries plan stated: "Our policy will be to replace vessels once they reach the end of their working lives. This is around 30 years and the replacement date of each vessel will be kept under review on a case-by-case basis by CMAL and the operator."

But there have also questions over whether even 30 years is the correct working life of the CalMac ferries.

After 1973, when the Caledonian Steam Packet Co. acquired most of the ferries and routes and began joint Clyde and West Highland operations under the new name of Caledonian MacBrayne, the official expected life of a ferry had been 20 years.

That is until 2002, three years after the 1999 devolution when the then Scottish Government-owned Caledonian MacBrayne which then owned the fleet and procured vessels, extended the 'working life' from 20 years to 25 years.

CMAL which took control of the ownership of the ferry network and the purchase of new vessels in 2006, had since moved the depreciation life from up to a maximum of 25 years to 35 years.

Analysis using official data shows that from 1993, before devolution, to 2007, 12 ferries with a combined tonnage of 33,350 were launched - a replacement rate of one in 1.16 years.

A Transport Scotland spokesman said: “Scottish Ministers fully recognise the need to accelerate the investment in the lifeline fleet to ensure vessels deliver the resilience and capacity needed.  This is why £580m was set out in the Infrastructure Investment Plan, and on top of that a further investment of over £100m was made available to allow an additional two Islay class vessels to be ordered and they are currently being built.

“The pre consultation draft of the long-term plan for vessels and ports published in December 2022 clearly sets out Ministers’ intentions to reduce the age of the lifeline fleets to an average of around 15 years. The Small Vessel Replacement scheme remains on track with the first vessels expected to be delivered as planned in 2026.”