The Isle of Wight Council has voted to take action on ‘more expensive’ and ‘less reliable’ ferry services.
At a Full Council meeting earlier this week, councillors voted for a motion, merged from 2 separate submissions by Councillors Michael Lilley and Ed Blake, which calls for the democratic control of Solent ferry companies.
Cllr Lilley and Blake’s motion described cross-Solent ferries as providing a lifeline service which is essential to the economic and social wellbeing of Isle of Wight residents.
It urged the Council to work with the Island’s 2 MPs and call urgent meetings with ferry operators, Red Funnel and Wightlink, to discuss dissatisfaction with current services as well as concerns about reliability in the coming winter months.
The motion also called on the Government to recognise that entirely private and unregulated Solent ferries are no longer appropriate, especially given Government plans for rail and buses.
The submission added:
“Make legislative provision to bring ferries under democratic control in line with its strategic vision on trains and buses, including regulations for particular prices, including options for caps and costs of travel, timetables and service reliability”.
The incoming Labour government has planned to give local transport authorities across the UK the power to take control of bus services through franchising or public ownership. Transport secretary Louise Haigh also has plans to take rail passenger services into public ownership.
In an impassioned address, Cllr Lilley said:
“This to me is an issue of total inequality – it’s an inequality issue. It actually infringes Islanders’ human rights.
“We have many children on this Island that have never crossed the Solent – there are children in my ward that live in Ryde and have never crossed the Solent.
“When you ask their families why, they say because we cannot afford the ferry prices – we are in a cost of living crisis.”
Phil Delaney, Wightlink commercial director, said:
“We regularly meet with the Isle of Wight Council, MPs and customers to discuss the frequency and timings of our services.
“Wightlink runs more than 140 sailings a day, including 24/7 on our Fishbourne route, and from 05:00 to 23:00 on the Ryde Pier passenger service.
“In August 2024, we ran 98.7 per cent of our timetabled sailings, with 90.7 per cent of departures sailing within five minutes of the scheduled time.
“We are always looking at how we can improve our performance to meet customer needs and are open to adding extra sailings where there is sufficient customer appetite.”
Will anything come of this, I doubt it, they are private companies and will always come up with a hogwash excuse or say, we need 5 years to put things right, and this council will suck all the bullshit up. There should be publicly owned service, with new ferries, not just taking over these worn out and quite frankly unsafe ferries. Stop dynamic pricing too, that is just plain profiteering.
And the outcome will be ……. Nothing whatso ever.
A nice idea but given the Isle of Wight Councils ability to run the floating bridge, I think we need to be careful what we wish for.
This makes me laugh, both of you are private ltd companies, change your services to freight only.
“Democratic” control is a pretty meaningless statement. Do they mean to nationalise the service? Who will pay for that? And how will it improve anything? The solution I would favour is the taxpayer subsidising fares (under levelling up rules) against the company guaranteeing (with penalties for failure) an agreed minimum service level, and having an agreed investment plan to replace the ships.
What exactly does “take action” mean? Undertaking to talk to our MPs. Surely they do that anyway and the MPs both know all about the problems. It all sounds like a bit of sabre rattling to make the council appear to be doing something but I bet we will still be in the same position in five years time. The companies are both diven by money alone. Central government can’t afford to nationalise everything and the council certainly don’t have the money or the expertise.
Be careful what you wish for why not give island residence meaningful concessions half price or more if the IWCC should run them think how the garden bin price has increased we don’t want to end up with more subsidys
Does this include their own chain ferry?
What action do they intend taking against themselves?
I think the council will write them a strongly worded letter, then we’ll see an improvement in services!