In response, a Scottish Government spokesperson said: "The Scottish Parliament decided, independently of. With new ferries now 5 years overdue and two-and-a half times over . VideoJeremy Bowen on reporting from Ukraine's frontline, Imran Khan survives deadly Pakistan rally shooting, The conspiracy theorists who could run US elections, Why the latest UN climate conference matters. Ferry campaigners and councillors blame CalMac and the Scottish government, which ultimately owns the ferry service, for decades of underfunding and complacency about the impact these. [8], By the end of September 2022, the cost estimates from Ferguson Marine to put both ferries into service had risen by another 100 million to a total of 340 million. Ministers now own the yard. Please register or log in to comment on this article. Civil servants waited until he could be briefed before awarding the contract so he could check there were no banana skins. Ferries fiasco will keep haunting the Scottish Government. Both the Glen Sannox and Hull 802 are millions of pounds over budget and more than five years late due to problems with the Port Glasgow yard, which included the business going into administration. Now, it looks as though Hull 802 may not even be used for the original route it was promised to serve, as CalMac . Union representatives praised Mr Hair for offering permanent contracts to temporary staff, but later became worried by slow progress despite high numbers of highly-paid managers and supervisors being taken on. McColl, Fergusons former boss, claims his firm was forced to work to a purely political timetable: that the SNP wanted a good news story to announce at its party conference, and rushed through the contract without normal safeguards. The SNP Westminster leader urged his opponents to check Hansard for him talking about renewable energy but nothing was found on the system. The Scottish government gave the go-ahead for the procurement of two new large CalMac ferries in the summer of 2014, with the original plan to name the preferred bidder by end of March 2015. Its Transport Scotland and CMAL agencies respectively fund and procure new vessels. The ferries have still not been delivered with some estimating that the fiasco could cost taxpayers more than 300m. [33] This call was later supported by the Scottish Conservatives transport minister Graham Simpson. Ferguson's design was the heaviest ship, requiring the largest engines. In the meantime, CalMac has been scouring the world for second-hand ferries. Opposition critics claimed there were still "vital questions" to be answered on the ferry fiasco and hit out at the "culture of secrecy and deflection. Dossier suggests ferry deal may have been rigged, The workers who saw Scotland's ferries saga unfold, Waypoints by Outlander star Sam Heughan reaches top 10 in New York Times bestseller list, Bonfire Night 2022: Where to watch firework displays in Clydebank, Glasgow Sheriff Court: Christina Goldie acquitted on assault charge, Newton Mearns: John and Louise Scullion celebrate golden wedding anniversary, Zelensky accuses Russia of 'energy terrorism', Jeremy Bowen on reporting from Ukraine's frontline. The cost so far is 240m, two-and-a-half times the original budget. Despite the advantage of having access to CalMac's own specification document, a report by a CalMac naval architect still found the design by Remontowa best matched its requirements, with Ferguson ranked second. Here are 10 key things that we learned during the investigation. It centres on a botched procurement process. It emerged that windows had been painted on, the bulbous bow was made from flat sheet steel and the funnel not operational. The SNP ferries fiasco has taken another nasty turn - The Spectator. While 1.3m was added to the Ferguson bid, a shipyard in Turkey had 4.5m added to its price. BBC Disclosure learned that matters came to head in November when the workforce representatives told the board of directors they had lost confidence in the senior management team. Public inquiry call as failure to order fuel sensors for Scots fiasco ferry made it unsafe Nov 1, 2022 - 16:30 0 A FAILURE to build sensors into one of the ferries at the centre of. The workforce also communicated this to Finance Secretary Kate Forbes, and the following month it was announced Mr Hair would be moving on. Swinney subsequently claimed he was only providing "budget approval", rather than approval for the contract itself, as there would be significant inefficiency in Government if a senior Cabinet Minister was involved in approving every contract. John Sturrock QC: CalMac ferries fiasco - what mediation could have achieved. Ferguson had been given a 12m order from CMAL a few weeks earlier for a small ferry, MV Catriona, without a requirement for such bank guarantees. Despite this warning, this timetable was adopted, giving ferry operator CalMac just three weeks to draw up its Specification of Technical and Operational Requirements. One critical aspect is the breakdown of relationships between two of the main protagonists, CMAL, the Scottish government-owned ferry purchasers, and FMEL . The fiasco on Scotland's ferries continues and still seems far from a safe harbour. [9], Steel was cut on the on 7 April 2016 and the MV Glen Sannox was launched in November 2017 by first minister Nicola Sturgeon[10] and supposed to be in service by mid-2018. Every player in this fiasco is now Scottish government-owned and controlled. [4], At the time that contract was awarded there were concerns that Ferguson Marine had not built any ferries of this size in the recent past. The BBC Disclosure investigation, however, uncovered emails from December 2014 which show Ferguson had already made it clear to CMAL that as a newly-formed company it was struggling to obtain a bank guarantee. This was due to Ferguson Marine getting sight of a detailed document with technical specifications and also getting a secret meeting with CMAL, which no other shipyard got. The "Shipbuilders of Port Glasgow" sculpture with Glen Sannox in the background, Jim McColl confirmed that he looked into buying Ferguson before it went bust, Evidence that a builders refund guarantee could be provided was a mandatory requirement before being allowed to bid, Ferguson was allowed to resubmit drawings for a much lighter ship, Tim Hair was paid nearly 1.3m during his time as turnaround director, 1: Jim McColl was already looking at buying the yard before it went into administration, 2: CalMac's specification was based on a ship designed for a Swedish route, 3: Ferguson was allowed onto the shortlist despite not meeting a mandatory requirement, 4: Assessors knew whose bids they were scoring, 5: A key document gave Ferguson an advantage, 6: CalMac's experts thought a rival bid was better, 7: Ferguson's design changed significantly after the submission deadline, 8: Ferguson's initial price was 37m higher than the cheapest bid, 9: CMAL and CalMac were often at loggerheads over the design, 10: Workers had no confidence in 'turnaround director' Tim Hair, Jeremy Bowen on reporting from Ukraine's frontline. The simulations had prompted concerns this design would struggle to meet the demanding deadweight - or cargo carrying - requirements, so instead a bigger ship known as Model 20 was developed. CMAL gave Ferguson 38 points in the quality assessment, nearly 10 points more than its nearest rival, making it the winner overall. Opposition parties argue the Ferguson's fiasco is just one of a series of troubled deals by the Scottish National party government that have put hundreds of millions of pounds of taxpayers'. [17], The political disagreements between the parties involved are still ongoing. Just like the Scottish Child Payment which will soon be 25 per week per child. The Week is part of Future plc, an international media group and leading digital publisher. The Auditor General's recent report on the construction of two CalMac ferries identifies various failures. During a Holyrood inquiry two years ago, CMAL officials said they saw nothing problematic about the same company being used for both roles. All rights reserved. The retro games consoles that could net you a packet on online: does your old favourite make the list? Another requirement was that the ferries would need larger bow thrusters and a stern thruster to make them more manoeuvrable in dock. But in recent years, its network has been plagued with cancellations and disruptions. Read about our approach to external linking. SNP urged to act after numbers of pupils missing school sky-rockets in Scotland. The ferry fiasco is an ongoing Scottish political scandal relating to the construction of two ferries (Hull 801 and Hull 802) by the Ferguson Marine Ltd, for the state-owned ferry operator Caledonian MacBrayne under direction of a public infrastructure authority, Caledonian Maritime Assets Ltd (CMAL), Transport Scotland, and the Scottish Government, headed at the time by First Minister Nicola . Defending the decision, Nicola Sturgeon said that governments receive legal advice regularly about projects and contracts and labelled Mr Ross desperate. When this was queried, it said it was having discussions with the Scottish government regarding "bonding for ship contracts in general" and that the issue will "hopefully be sorted". A year later the business was awarded a 97 million contract to build two ferries, one to serve on the Isle of Arran and replace the MV Isle of Arran, and the second to sail between Skye, North Uist and Harris. She promised a full review but stopped short of a public inquiry. "It is increasingly clear that a public inquiry will be inevitable to get to the bottom of what has gone wrong here as we are still left asking basic questions with no answers., Scottish ministers failure to provide full disclosure or initiate a public inquiry makes it look like they and their agencies have something to hide., A CalMac spokesperson said: The Disclosure Scotland programme raised a number of serious questions and the emails quoted were sent three weeks prior to the programme being broadcast and the details contained within the programme being known.. Ferguson's is now notorious in Scotland as the scene of a debacle - the 'ferry fiasco'. He confirmed that the contract should proceed. All you need to know about everything that matters. In 2019, CMAL reported that no morethan six people were working on 801 andno more than two people were working on 802 at any one time. In Depth Scotland's ongoing ferry fiasco: what you need to know Delays in the delivery of two new CalMac passenger ferries have caused a major political scandal The Week Staff 13 May 2022. [24][25] Both ships are also unlikely to operate their designated routes because the 130 million project to convert existing infrastructure in the ports to handle the new ferries remains incomplete. In this case though, the ship yard, Ferguson Marine Engineering Limited, wasnt able to give such a guarantee. The deadline for bids was 31 March 2015, and they were to be assessed 50% on cost and 50% on quality. CMAL and the Scottish Government were also contacted for comment. Research by the Lib Dems has found that 7431 ferry sailings were cancelled in Scotland's Western Isles between January and July 2022. Concerns were also raised about the rationale of erecting the funnels and masts on the first ship when vital equipment for these structures was not yet fitted. [3], The source of the scandal starts in the summer of 2014 when the last shipyard on the lower clyde, Ferguson Marine Ltd went into administration. The average age for each ferry is 24 years old, of the 10 largest ferries, four are over 30 years old, which is beyond their expected operational life and the MV Isle of Arran 38 years old. Senior people from his Clyde Blowers Capital investment company visited the yard to look at the business potential. [1] Delays and cancellations in recent years have been blamed by CalMac on aging ferries. It is a relief to see the SNP finally playing catch-up on their decade-old ferry replacement programme, but after the fiasco at Ferguson Marine, no-one be holding their breath for these vessels. The ongoing fiasco with CalMac ferry services is the result of years of mismanagement from the SNP. A key section of Ferguson's bid was largely copied from this longer document. The ferry fiasco is an ongoing Scottish political scandal relating to the construction of two ferries (Hull 801 and Hull 802) by the Ferguson Marine Ltd, for the state-owned ferry operator Caledonian MacBrayne under direction of a public infrastructure authority, Caledonian Maritime Assets Ltd (CMAL), Transport Scotland, and the Scottish Government, headed at the time by First Minister Nicola Sturgeon of the Scottish National Party. [13], A further issue is that the engines bought for the vessels had been sat idle for six years, and Dr Spyros Hirdaris, a professor of maritime safety from Helisinki where the engine manufacturer Wartsila is based, stated that there was a "high possibility that the ferry engines won't work". FERRY FIASCO: Nicola Sturgeon dodges Douglas Ross' questions about accepting ferries responsibility No views Sep 29, 2022 0 Dislike Share Save The Scottish Sun 5.47K subscribers At FMQs,. The vessels are already 150 million over budget and 5 years late. [6], The Scottish Government announced they were signing the contract with Ferguson Marine on the first day of the Scottish National Party Conference in October 2015. The ferry fiasco is an ongoing Scottish political scandal relating to the construction of two ferries (Hull 801 and Hull 802) by the Ferguson Marine Ltd, for the state-owned ferry operator Caledonian MacBrayne under direction of a public infrastructure authority, Caledonian Maritime Assets Ltd (CMAL), Transport Scotland, and the Scottish Government, headed at the time by First Minister Nicola . A new secrecy storm has broken out surrounding the Scottish Government's handling of the ferry fiasco and in particular the bombshell BBC Scotland documentary about the situation. Sign up to our daily newsletter here. One classic mobile phone has an average eBay selling price of 1,776.01 here's a list of second-hand phones fetching the highest average prices at online auction and you might even have one lying around for a little Christmas boost. The Baby Box is one of the many transformative policies that @theSNP has implemented. Out of the six shipyards that tendered to build the ferries, Ferguson Marine put forward the most expensive bid, at 37 million more than the cheapest. One of two Caledonian Macbrayne ferries being built in the Ferguson Marine shipyard in Port Glasgow (Image: PA) A new secrecy storm has broken out surrounding the Scottish Government's handling of the ferry fiasco and in particular the bombshell BBC Scotland documentary about the situation. A leaked email from early July reveals that the head of vessels at its procurement agency CMAL believed such a timetable would be "hugely challenging". But despite the concerns of Caledonian Marine Assets Ltd (CMAL) the public corporation that owns CalMac Scottish ministers signed it off anyway. A new management team had recently been installed, and they too had no experience of building a ferry of this size. CMAL warned; "The current rate at which cable is pulled presents a serious threat to the project". [38], In a written response to the Public Audit Committee Mackay said that he had "confidence" in the recommendation, and that there was expectation the contract would receive "sufficient monitoring and oversight". A great deal. Four days after the face-to-face meeting, Ferguson's architect was sent a full copy of its technical document with issues highlighted in yellow marker pen. Outlander author Diana Gabaldon shares sneak peek of the tenth book in the time-travelling saga. A NEW fault with one of the ferries at the centre of Scotland's ferry fiasco could see it lose its green credentials.
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