Wightlink’s CEO says that she would be surprised if there is much that would come from Government regulation or intervention that would make cross-Solent travel better.
During an interview with Island Echo last week, Katy Taylor shared her thoughts on possible Government intervention and how it would affect Wightlink’s operations.
The new Chief Exec says she can see a version of pump-priming to support things such as later Fast Cat sailings, similar to what happens in the bus industry. But has warned that the desired outcomes from intervention have to be clear before then working out what is the best way of getting that to happen.
Speaking candidly about the potential future action by Labour, Katy said:
“I would be surprised if there is much that would come in terms of regulation or government intervention that would make things better. If you want more services, we need more people to travel. That’s the only way.
“I’ve come from Southern Water and prior to that I worked in the buses and trains, so, let’s not kid ourselves, I’ve got quite a lot of background in intervention and regulation.
“It is hard to see how regulation or government intervention would support or make things like later sailings or cheaper fares better without it costing the business more. All regulation ends up costing you more because you end up having to report on things and putting a lot of infrastructure around regulated things.
“If you run early or later sailings, they are going to cost money. So you have two choices, which is either the people who take those sailings pay for them or other people on other sailings pay for them. So someone is paying for it somewhere, and that’s the problem – if you put these extra costs into the business, somebody somewhere still has to pay for them.
Article continues below this advertisement “So the chances are other fares would go up if you regulated and created some sort of lower fare”.
Could the Government subsidise cross-Solent travel?
Katy Taylor thinks that the Government has bigger priorities at the moment and finds it hard to believe that Whitehall would subsidise cross-Solent travel…
“I don’t see how government intervention helps with running more services unless the government are going to subsidise them. And if the government are going to subsidise them, then that’s fine. I just find it hard to believe that’s the priority, given everything else the government’s got to spend money on.
“If you want to subsidise some fares, again that’s going to require money from the government, or it’s going to come from other passengers.
“I do believe it’s better for us to listen and think about ways that we can help and think about things we can do”.
Price Cap
Islanders often call for a price cap on cross-Solent travel, to which Katy says:
“You could price cap certain fares and then you have one of two choices as a business; you either have to charge more elsewhere, or you have to cut your costs. And once you’ve got this big fixed cost base, the only way you go is you have to cancel sailings.
“So what you will end up doing is capping something that over here means you end up constantly saving. So again, the Islanders will ultimately lose out”.
What realistic action could the Government take?
Although Katy thinks that Government intervention would do little to help, she does envision a type of pump-priming funding…
“What I can see is a version of intervention that brings funding in. Buses, for example, have sort of a light touch under the Bus Services Act where they did a thing called pump-priming.
“You’ve got a proposal for it that says ‘we think this might be a goer, but commercially it doesn’t wash it’s face’. And so the government says, ‘okay fine, we will give you half your funding’. And then you put the other half in and you try and get it to be commercial at the end of the perioid. Hopefully it’s commercial and you carry on running it. I could see something like that”.
Later Fast Cats
Katy hasn’t ruled out a future where Fast Cats run later into the night, something that Government intervention could help with.
She has said:
“There’s a bit of discussion sometimes around earlier and later Fast Cats. I’ve spoken to the team who used to run them and they say nobody used to travel on them, so there’s a bit of ‘would you really go there?’.
“If that’s really what people want, then perhaps the government would fund half of it and we would fund half of the cost of running those services for a period of time. At the end of the year, if we’ve got enough passengers to cover the costs then we could agree to keep funding them.
“There are ways that we could do it [Government funding] so I’m not saying this is awful and it will destroy the business”.
Katy adds:
“It’s quite expensive to run extra Fast Cats because of the way the rosters work but if we really start to build up a bit of momentum about it, we’ll go back and revisit it. I’m super open. Believe me, if, running an extra ship pays for itself, we will run an extra ship”.
Wightlink CEO says “you have one of two choices as a business; you either have to charge more elsewhere, or you have to cut your costs”
Yes, to balance the books,.. if you want to reduce the fares (income), you have to reduce the outgoings…
but the outgoings consist of costs, and profits
her only ‘vision’ is that if we want reduced fares,.. the government (tax payer) will have to fund it, so it doesn’t reduce their profits (e.g. her salary or dividends)
How about reducing the massive profits you make & stop using the Isle of Wight residents and visitors as a cash cow to service loans that are nothing to do with the Isle of Wight
That is a very informative insight into the issues surrounding the whole Ferry issue.
It would also be very informative if perhaps MP Quigley could publicly address the points so we can all see the government perspective.
I won’t hold my breath though as it would no doubt just be ‘it wassna me, it was the other lot, black hole, fixing the foundations” a bit like his party political broadcast masquerading as his Christmas message (why did that suddenly disappear from the County Press?)
Bare faced effrontery. Wightlink have loaded up the company with debt to minimise their tax bill and to maximise their profits.A bit like Southern Water. Take your business practices elsewhere and stop trying to con us all. We can see through the rhetoric.
How about capping their profits!
To summarise the lady’s position:
“The government should give us (WL) some money, and then we’ll carry on exactly as we do now.”
The writing is on the wall: HoverTravel in trouble, Red Flannel in trouble, WightLink asking for a handout.
There is only one solution: let them all go to the wall prior to being bought out of bankruptcy under affordable, debt-free conditions and operated as a single public utility without duplication of costs.
Messrs Quigley and Robertson Please Note.
I thought Quigley was sorting the Ferries,
or was that just political talk!
Build a Bridge or a Tunnel.
Yep just about summed up what’s wrong with all of it..
Inthe financial year ending March 2023, Wightlink made a profit of £16 million and proposed a dividend of £10 million. How they now have the brass neck to ask for taxpayers money to invest in their private company is, frankly, breathtaking in its dishonesty. Ms Taylor should hang her head in shame at having suggested such a thing. Greed, greed, greed.
Yawn, yawn, blah de blah, blah.
Forget shareholders and profits. Fix your vessels and give a service to be proud of (something not in the CEO’s of WL, RF & HT’s vocabulary).