After an exchange last Thursday in the House of Commons, the Island’s MP has said that Wightlink must stop cutting services.
Transport Minister Stephen Hammond MP told Andrew Turner that the Government is keeping the case for ‘public service obligations’ (guaranteed levels of service) under review, but at the moment believes there is no case for them.
Mr Turner raised the issue after Wightlink announced on 13th August that they were axing further crossings on their Yarmouth to Lymington route in September. The latest announcement follows deep cuts to the service in January, also without any public consultation. Even after the reduced number of sailings, service reliability on the route has fallen from 95.2% in July last year to 85.1% in July this year according to Wightlink’s own figures.
Mr Turner said:
“Wightlink must stop cutting services simply to make more money. Wightlink Ltd’s latest accounts show their profit exceeded £8m last year – so they can’t claim that overall their services, including those they have now axed, were unprofitable. It’s high time the company took more seriously their obligations to Islanders, many of whom are raising this issue with me.
“The Minister seems to think that cross-Solent ferry services are a properly competitive market. But the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) found competition only works for passengers willing and able to switch between routes; for Islanders in particular that is often impossible. I am writing to him to make that point. I am also exploring with the Council the possibility of a cross-party submission asking the OFT to consider whether Wightlink’s very high levels of debt have influenced their decisions; there is far more information available now than there was in 2009.
“The OFT made clear there is scope to look again at the issues. They also concluded that better information about prices and services would demonstrate the ferry companies were serious that they care about improving services; the complete lack of public consultation by Wightlink speaks volumes.”
Mr Turner welcomed confirmation from Red Funnel that they recognise the value of public consultation on services and have no plans to change their current schedule.
Earlier this year Hovertravel consulted passengers on planned changes to their timetable, after taking the views of their customers into account they scrapped the plans.
Neil Chapman the Managing Director of Hovertravel said:
“We recently conducted a consultation for a possible revised timetable, and the views of the islanders were invaluable. We were very grateful for their support. The results led us to no changes being implemented on this occasion. That said we are a commercial and privately owned business with no public subsidy and it is important we constantly review and manage our business. It is important we are profitable to ensure future investment to the island’s infrastructure. Not all our crossings are profitable but we believe in consulting our customers about any possible major changes to services – aside from anything else it makes good commercial sense to do that. We fully appreciate that we are a vital link between two communities separated by the Solent.”
