SCOTTISH GOVERNMENT-owned CalMac Ferries Ltd has amassed nearly £12m in fines for poor performance since it took charge of lifeline services with penalties soaring in recent years, it can be revealed.
Details of the charges, which have been previously been kept under wraps while payments were handed over to the Scottish Government, show that there was nearly £10.5m in performance fines in the six-and-a-half years since CalMac took the franchise - nearly eight times more than in its first nine years in charge of the beleaguered west coast fleet.
It comes as concerns rise about the reliability of Scotland's ageing ferry fleet amidst growing calls for the penalties to be used to compensate islanders who have been hit by disruptions caused by vessels breaking down.
A Labour-led motion has called on MSPs to back calls for a compensation fund for South Uist islanders who have been impacted by ferry cancellations.
The party is supporting calls by the Lochboisdale Ferry Business Impact Group for a 'resilience fund' to be launched to support islanders who have been consistently hit by cancellations to services through a CalMac route prioritisation matrix which attempts to place ferries in positions to ensure the least impact on the public.
READ MORE: Scrapping CalMac and CMAL a 'non-starter' if SNP wants to be in EU
But there has been no commitment to that from the new transport secretary Màiri McAllan who said all the penalties were being use to improve the resilience of the existing fleet following network failures.
She said it "part-funded" the £9m emergency nine month charter of MV Alfred from Pentland Ferries. The vessel cost the ferry company just £5m more to buy in 2019.
Transport Scotland was unable to state last night how much of the penalties was used.
Demand for action has been increasing following CalMac’s cancellation of ferries between the mainland port in Mallaig and Lochboisdale on South Uist with local businesses estimating a loss of £50,000 per day due to tourism, imports and exports being hit by the cut.
An estimated 500 residents, 200 cars, 40 vans and 20 lorries converged on Lochboisdale - the port which links South Uist to the mainland - on June 4 to protest about the cancellations and CalMac chief executive Robbie Drummond has made a trip to meet islanders to explain the decision.
Official records show that the ferry operator has amassed £11.493m in fines since 2007 - when the SNP started to control Scotland's devolved legislature. The penalties were imposed by the Scottish Government agency Transport Scotland.
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Some £4.453m of the penalties were imposed in the 18 months between October, 2021 and March 2023 - while the subsidised ferry operator made an after-tax loss of £3.7m in 2021/22.
The penalty charges have previously been kept under wraps by the Scottish Government believing that it was commercially sensitive.
Similar penalties had been made to Transport Scotland by ScotRail when it was run by state-owned Dutch transport firm Abellio with the money reinvested in improvements to the rail network.
Michael Marra, the Scottish Labour's transport spokesman has raised questions over where the money has gone while saying that the resilience fund should be set up for the benefit of island residents.
"Hardly a week goes by without further announcements of delays and cancellations as the network rusts and breaks....
"That incompetent approach is not arresting decline or incentivising better performance, precisely the opposite. CalMac bosses know that the money is being shuffled around. Yet another SNP accountancy trick.
"Island residents and business owners are the only ones to experience a true financial penalty as their livelihoods are destroyed."
He added: “They are raking in millions in fines from this chaos while the communities affected are hung out to dry."
As part of its contract management arrangements, Transport Scotland has a series of performance measures to assess its ferry operators and penalties are imposed when they are not met.
READ MORE: CalMac chief 'can't get car on ferry' on route to meet angry islanders
It reports two of these to its senior management team - reliability and punctuality.
Performance deductions are not made against reliability and punctuality measures when a sailing is cancelled or delayed due to a ‘relief event’.
Relief events include adverse weather, tidal conditions, traffic problems and other issues of safety.
One ferry user group official said: "It is disgusting that so much is being raked back from CalMac for service failures caused by a lack of Scottish Government investment in lifeline services, and yet there is a reluctance to compensate us for this fiasco."
The Lochboisdale Ferry Business Impact Group been calling for penalties to be used to benefit businesses across Scotland that have lost services as a result of cancellations.
The group was formed in early 2022 in the wake of a two-week disruption to the South Uist service, caused by the sudden and unexpected removal of MV Lord of the Isles for repair work to her firefighting system.
For a short time Uist was left without a service after North Uist's MV Hebrides struck a pier.
It returned to normal service following repairs to its damaged hull.
The outage was preceded by a three-month period which saw the almost complete removal of the service, during which, the locals say, these repairs could have been implemented.
A study for the group said the major disruption to the community of South Uist resulted in financial and economic losses estimated around £648,000 near the height of the busy season.
It is understood that some £300,000 of the £3.5m of fines that covered a period from April 2021 to May 2022 were the result of issues with the South Uist route.
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