Britain’s maritime safety watchdog has come under fire after wrongly claiming it held no records of regulatory checks on Scotland’s state-owned ferry operator for five years leading up to the grounding of an 'unseaworthy' 40-year-old CalMac ferry.
The claim covered the period leading up to the grounding of the MV Loch Linnhe, one of the oldest vessels in the CalMac fleet, which struck rocks in the Sound of Gigha on January 30 last year while sailing from Tayinloan to Campbeltown. The ferry had sailed without a legally required passage plan.
The Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA) initially said it held no information about inspections, audits, investigations or other checks involving CalMac Ferries Ltd between January 2020 and January 2025. But it has later backtracked on this, saying their statement was wrong.
It has raised fresh questions about the regulatory picture surrounding Scotland's publicly owned ferry operator, at a time when serious concerns have been raised about safety procedures following the incident.
The MCA is the official UK government regulator responsible for enforcing strict maritime safety laws, inspecting commercial vessels, and licensing ship crews. Prior to any incident, the agency is meant to proactively audits ferry operators like CalMac to ensure every vessel is legally certified and navigating with mandatory voyage passage plans.
If safety rules are breached or a vessel groundings occurs, the MCA holds the legal power to issue statutory repair mandates, restrict ship movements, and pursue formal penalties against operators. It can immediately detain unsafe ships and revoke safety certificates, while pursuing criminal prosecutions in court that carry unlimited corporate fines or up to two years in prison for responsible crew.
The Herald previously revealed that the Marine Accident Investigation Branch (MAIB) failed to carry out a full safety investigation into the grounding while 'wrongly' concluding that the written-off vessel had a legal voyage plan.
The MCA made the admission in response to a request asking how many times it had identified failures by CalMac to prepare, maintain or follow required passage plans, and whether it had recorded repeated deficiencies involving the company's vessels. It said it did not hold the information detailed in the question.
But its response went further than simply saying it could not provide data on passage-planning failures.
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In its advice and assistance, the agency stated: "For the period January 1 2020 to January 20 2025 there were no inspections, audits, investigations or other regulatory checks relating to CalMac Ferries Ltd."
An MCA source later admitted that this was wrong, and that it all related checks over legally required passage plans.
A maritime safety expert who was critical of the MAIB’s decision to bypass a full investigation into the MV Loch Linnhe grounding says it "fundamentally misjudges the scope of modern accident prevention" added that the MCA response said it still raises more questions about the regulation of CalMac.
"It is important not to confuse the inspection of individual vessels with regulatory oversight of the company operating them. Ships may undergo statutory surveys and inspections through organisations authorised to act on behalf of the Maritime and Coastguard Agency," he said.
"The absence of any recorded inspections, audits, investigations or other regulatory checks involving CalMac over a five-year period would be a legitimate cause for questions about the level of oversight being exercised.
"A ferry operator's responsibility does not end with keeping its vessels mechanically sound. It must also have effective safety management systems, ensure crews follow procedures and make sure voyages are properly planned.
"Given what subsequently happened with the Loch Linnhe, it is reasonable to ask whether the operator's safety procedures were being adequately scrutinised. The important issue is not simply how often inspections took place, but whether there was effective oversight of the company's safety management and compliance."
The expert added: "Even if the MCA has got in a muddle and that they were talking about no record of checks relating to passage planning over a five-year period, it is reasonable to ask how frequently compliance was actually examined and what assurance the regulator had that the required procedures were being followed.
"The absence of recorded failures does not necessarily mean there were no failures. Equally, it would be wrong to conclude that CalMac was not subject to other forms of safety oversight. But given what happened to the Loch Linnhe, these are legitimate questions about how passage-planning standards were being monitored.
"The absence of recorded findings does not necessarily mean that procedures were being followed. Equally, it does not prove that failures occurred. But in light of the Loch Linnhe grounding, the question of how passage-planning compliance was being monitored deserves scrutiny."
The Loch Linnhe struck a charted rock at around 1.26pm on January 30, 2025, while sailing from Tayinloan to Campbeltown. CalMac says the weather was calm and settled with light airs and that the grounding lasted around 20 minutes.
The MAIB confirmed in a response that it conducted a preliminary assessment and that its chief inspector had decided the incident did not meet the threshold for a mandatory investigation under the Merchant Shipping (Accident Reporting and Investigation) Regulations 2012.
Asked specifically whether MAIB had known that no passage plan had been prepared, and whether the absence of one had been considered when deciding whether to investigate, the branch replied: “The preliminary assessment concluded that there was a passage plan in place for the voyage, therefore does not hold any information indicating there was not one.”
But CalMac in response to questions about the grounding, stated that the ferry had been sailing without the required document. It confirmed that it had sent MAIB a preliminary investigation after the grounding, but that they never attended the vessel.
The company subsequently made clear that it “did not explicitly advise the MAIB that a passage plan was or was not in place at any time.”
The incident took the 1986-built vessel out of service for 218 days.
Repair costs amounted to £1,048,359. Although the vessel was assessed by CalMac as a constructive total loss, it was repaired rather than replaced.
The MCA attended the vessel on February 1, 2025, for what was described as a general inspection.
The latest response from the MCA does not explain the scope or outcome of the later inspection of the Loch Linnhe.
Passage planning is an important part of safe navigation. UK safety-of-navigation rules require ships proceeding to sea to have a properly prepared voyage plan, with the level of detail depending on the vessel, crew and voyage.
The Supreme Court has previously underlined the importance of the requirement. In the 2021 case involving the container ship CMA CGM Libra, which grounded after leaving the port of Xiamen, the court stated: "There can be no doubt that a vessel would be unseaworthy if she began her voyage without a passage plan."
CalMac has previously defended its handling of the grounding and rejected suggestions that the incident pointed to wider problems across the operator.
The company has also said it implemented operational improvements following its internal investigation.
A CalMac spokeswoman said: “I can confirm that the Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA) did carry out regular audits and inspections of CalMac vessels between these specified dates. These are statutory requirements and we would not be allowed to operate services without them. We will continue to work closely with the MCA as our regulator to ensure we are meeting high safety standards.”
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