'Sham': 1000s of lost sailings missing from CalMac's reliability report card

The Herald has learnt that the public body created by the Scottish Government's Transport Scotland agency to support and deliver better communications in the Highlands and Islands has called on ministers to make changes because they say that CalMac's official performance data does not add up to the experience of users of the services.

According to its corporate information, CalMac achieves contractual technical reliability of 99.51% and punctuality of 99.57%.

But CalMac's performance penalties, which were once kept under wraps while payments were handed over to ministers, reveal that the Scottish Government-owned company has notched up £16m in performance penalties as it nears the end of the seven year contract.

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The Highlands and Islands Transport Partnership (HITRANS), the statutory regional transport partnership created by Transport Scotland to deliver better communications in the area in a critical analysis has told ministers that performance measures which were designed around giving penalties against contractual performance "have no value in terms of capturing how well the service is delivered to the passenger whose only useful measure is performance against timetable".

It said: "The current approach is to allow for publication statistics after a large number of permitted justifications for late running, cancellation at a journey level or even the entire cessation of service on a route being factored in."

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It all comes as the Scottish Government considers providing an uncontested award of the contract to provide lifeline island ferry services to CalMac 'in perpetuity', making it a wing of government.

CalMac's busiest ferry route in terms of sailings connects Gourock and Dunoon, and currently lays on around 30 round trip passenger sailings from Monday to Saturday providing a gateway for tourists to discover the Cowal peninsula and the wider regions of Argyll and Bute and Highlands.

But the Herald on Sunday learnt that thousands of sailings 'disappeared' from the timetable in 2021 alone - and did not appear to be considered when producing its performance results.

The service normally laid on around 19,300 timetabled sailings a year on the route. But in 2021 there were 12,340 sailings - around 7000 fewer and nearly 2,500 less than the year the Covid pandemic broke in 2020.

But CalMac's performance data showed that the total cancellations for 2021 amounted to just 1176, which amounted to the number of what the ferry operator deemed to be timetabled sailings minus those that actually operated. And there were just 144 sailings hit by technical issues.

It coincided with the service losing one of its two ferries for most of that year due to engine and propeller issues discovered in May while it was out of action for its annual overhaul check which normally only means a matter of three weeks in dry dock. Users had been told at the time that issues with 23-year-old MV Argyll Flyer was "due to emergent issues which have arisen during annual overhaul."

Asked to explain the 7,000 sailings anomaly, a CalMac source indicated that services that were removed and not timetabled are not seen as officially cancelled.

"While the vessels were out getting their engine overhauls, the services carried out by each vessel were not timetabled. These were planned engine overhauls, and as the timetables were planned to take this into account, sailings were not cancelled. These timetables were published in advance so customers were aware," the source said.

The official dates the CalMac source gave for the "upgrade works" Argyll Flyer were between May 18 and November 3.

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It was further stated that the sister vessel 24-year-old MV Ali Cat was also out from November 10 to January 7, 2022.

While Argyll Flyer remained out of action the service was reduced to a single vessel timetable. Throughout the period the ferry was classed as being in 'annual overhaul'.

During the summer, users were told options for chartering an additional vessel were being explored and accepted that the loss "had been disruptive".

At the time, Dunoon Community Council told us that the local ferry route was the "worst performing" due to the frequent breakdown of both ferries which some customers have nicknamed "the bathtubs".

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They said they had been "pressing for years" for the ferries to be replaced but despite promises there was a "failure to deliver". They said that numbers using the service had "dramatically decreased" due to "unreliability".

CalMac were asked how many sailings it was contracted to put on for each route since it took on the vital lifeline island ferry services in 2016. It said it did not have that information but said: "Timetables are agreed annually for winter and summer seasons and are different to the timetables set out in the original Clyde and Hebrides Ferry Service (CHFS) contract.".

The state-owned ferry operator has been landed with a record £316,000-a-month in fines for poor performance more recently in the wake of continuing concerns over the reliability of lifeline services.

The performance sanctions equate to a "staggering" 12 times the rate that was amassed in its first nine years in charge, it has emerged.

An industry expert said it looked like the performance anomalies were the result of services that have bitten the dust when issues have been discovered before timetables are finalised.

He added: "This policy is misleading and effectively massages CalMac’s performance figures. CalMac’s actual performance and service delivery is actually so much worse than they are prepared to admit.

"So across the network, if vessels are taken out of service for planned maintenance and a new timetable provided and customers informed, then it is not a cancelation. How many sailings are being missed and not included within the performance statistics."

One ferry user group official said: "This just makes the performance figures look like nothing more than a sham. Try telling passengers that the ferry services are reliable.

"The fact is that people who are used to travelling on ferries have always been baffled by the way that CalMac is judged and how their reliability figures are determined because their experience doesn't match it."

CalMac said that criticism was of its contractual performance and that its actual performance was "readily available".

It said that in terms of amended timetables, its contract advises that they are "required to measure performance against a new timetable rather than an original one, as long as more than 21 days’ notice is given".

HITRANS has told Transport Scotland that the performance measures should be changed to follow a similar approach to that required in the delivery of rail services.

It said that under the ScotRail contract the Public Performance Measure provides a "transparent system" of capturing true performance measuring both punctuality and reliability.

It pointed out that the CHFS contract allows for ‘relief events’ that are not counted within the published performance information.

These 'relief events' included sailings which were cancelled due to bad weather, in accordance with safety procedures, delays due to the unavailability or operational restrictions of harbour facilities or having to wait for the arrival of other public transport connections.

But they point out that they also include the wholesale cancellation of service to redeploy the vessel elsewhere.

"That the published statistics are so different to the performance experienced by passengers can only be a contributing factor to passenger frustration and dissatisfaction," it said.

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According to a CalMac memo where a sailing is not completed because of reasons it says are "outwith CalMac's control" they are excluded for the purposes of contractual performance reporting, They say this is due to marine legislation which "prohibits anyone seeking to influence or apply commercial pressure to vessel crew to sail in conditions which are deemed unsafe, such as adverse weather".

It says: "Actual reliability is defined as the percentage of sailings completed according to the published timetable, regardless of cause. This represents the real experience of users."

Before CalMac Ferries Ltd, a subsidiary of David MacBrayne Ltd, took the £1bn eight-year contract under competition from the services company Secro, its performance penalties over nine years to September, 2016 amounted to just £1.36m.

Nearly £5m in penalties have been imposed over the 15 months between October, 2022 and December, last year at an average rate of £315,578-a-month. Nearly £1m in fines have been imposed in the latest three month period from October to December.

It had already been forced to pay out a record annual penalty of £3.088m in the year from October 2021 - an average rate of £257,338-a month.

Similar penalties have been made by Transport Scotland to ScotRail over its performance when it was operated by Dutch state transport firm Abellio - but the money was reinvested in improvements to the Scottish rail network such as upgraded waiting areas on the Edinburgh to Glasgow route.

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As part of its contract management arrangements, Transport Scotland conducts a series of performance measures to assess ferry operators and penalties are imposed when they are not met.

It reports two of these - reliability and punctuality - to its senior management team.

Performance deductions are not made against reliability and punctuality measures when a sailing is cancelled or delayed due to a "relief event".

Some 18 of CalMac's 31 working ferries that were in service in 2021 and deployed across Scotland are now over the working life span of 25 years old.

The 40-year-old Isle of Arran which usually serves as the second Arran ferry in the summer, is second only to Isle of Cumbrae in a list of CalMac's oldest ferries. It has been the regular summer ferry on Argyll and Bute's Tarbert to Portavadie route, when it is not rerouted.

The others that are over 25 years old are Hebridean Isles (39) Loch Linnhe (38), Loch Riddon (38) Loch Striven (33), Loch Ranza (37), Isle of Mull (36), Lord of the Isles (35), Loch Dunvegan (33), Loch Fyne (33) Loch Buie (32), Loch Tarbert (32) Caledonian Isles (31), Isle of Lewis (29) and Loch Bhrusda, which was completed in May, 1996.

Meanwhile, some £100m has been spent on repairs for the entire ageing CalMac fleet in the space of just over three years, with £24.852m spent in the space of just five months to February, this year.

And new ferries Glen Sannox and sister ship Glen Rosa, which were due online in the first half of 2018, with both now due to serve Arran, are at least six years late, with costs expected to be quadruple the original £97m contract.

On April 3, Robbie Drummond stepped down as chief executive of CalMac with "immediate effect" following a review of its executive leadership as it faced "challenging years ahead".

Pauline Blackshaw, director for strategy and change for CalMac, said: “We take care to publish performance statistics as accurately as possible and are open and honest with our customers and communities about our performance. We publish two sets of reliability and punctuality figures, contractual and actual, which are both regularly reported and are available to the public.

“It is incorrect to state that if ferries are in annual overhaul for longer than planned that these are not classed as lost sailings. Time spent in overhaul is factored into timetables, and any delays are reflected in our actual reliability figures.

“We report all cancelled sailing figures on our site and are fully transparent about the number which received 'relief' (i.e. impacted sailings out with our control that are not counted towards our contractual performance) and the number that were not.  This info can be found, route by route.

“While we did schedule and operate less sailings on the Dunoon route in 2021 than in 2020, we carried 25% more passengers in 2021 than the previous year, with an average passenger capacity of only 7%.

“The six major and 10 small new vessels funded by the Scottish Government and arriving over the next few years are very much welcome; however, we face a difficult period as we wait in anticipation for them to be fully operational on the network.

"In the meantime, we will continue to work in partnership with local communities to ensure the best possible outcomes for all who rely on our services.”