South Uist business concerns over ferry repairs

Businesses in South Uist have raised concerns about the economic impact of problems affecting the island's ferry services to the mainland.

The ferry MV Lord of the Isles is to be withdrawn from the Mallaig-Lochboisdale route for an estimated eight days for repairs to its firefighting system.

CalMac said a relief boat was unavailable while the ferry was out of service from Tuesday.

Businesses said the route had increasingly been hit by problems.

It is also the latest in a series of disruptions affecting CalMac's west coast network, many due to its ageing fleet and delays to the delivery of new boats.

Christina Morrison, who owns a food takeaway on the ferry pier at Lochboisdale, said there were concerns about the reliability of South Uist's services.

She said: "We are always subject to disruptions and cancellations - we are an island and we do get bad weather, it's part and parcel of living here.

"But increasingly over the last couple of years it's been getting progressively worse."

Ms Morrison said there had been no service at all for the first three months of this year.

She said: "Then we finally got our summer timetable back on, but since then it has constantly been cancelled or pulled to different times."

Ms Morrison's business is heavily reliant on passing trade from ferry customers.

She said the days-long removal of the Lochboisdale-Mallaig service would result in the loss of hundreds of pounds in income, and affect staffs' pay because opening hours would be reduced.

Ms Morrison added: "There were people booked to come here on holiday and they are now cancelling their accommodation. Accommodation providers are now losing out."

CalMac said the Lord of the Isles' drencher system required essential repairs and the boat was estimated to return to service on 25 May, at the earliest.

Fiona Galbraith, area operations manager for the Hebrides, said: "Every effort will be made to complete this work in the shortest time possible to ensure the disruption of service to our community is minimised.

"We have explored options to deploy a relief vessel to Lochboisdale for the affected period but unfortunately this is not possible, as all our fleet is operating a timetabled service elsewhere in the network for the summer period."

She added: "I fully understand the impact this will have on our community during this period and would like to reassure everyone that these works are necessary to provide resilience and reliability to MV Lord of the Isles going forward."

CalMac said any passengers who were able to do so could travel as foot passengers on the Uig on Skye and Lochmaddy on North Uist service.

Western Isles SNP MSP Alasdair Allan raised the matter at Holyrood earlier this week.

Transport Minister Jenny Gilruth said she would meet CalMac representatives to discuss the situation.