News / North Isles tourists could pay higher fares
NORTH ISLES councillors have vented their frustration at lengthy delays to overhauling the structure of ferry fares, which may result in tourists paying more than locals to travel.
A review of the fares was commissioned when councillors agreed to cull more than £3 million from Shetland Islands Council’s ferries budget in February 2013.
Some work was carried out last summer, but a consultation to gauge how much extra tourists might be willing to pay will only happen later this year.
It is hoped the review will be complete in late 2014, meaning any changes will not be brought in until April next year.
Councillors for the area Gary Cleaver, Steven Coutts and Robert Henderson queued up to bemoan the length of time it has taken.
One change brought in last year was to reintroduce fares on the Bluemull Sound route for those who had not travelled from the Shetland mainland on the same day.
Cleaver pointed out that some Fetlar and Unst constituents were now having to pay upwards of £2,000 a year travelling to carry out low paid jobs in Yell.
“They’re still doing it under the belief that [changes would be made]. We’re going to have to tell them they’re going to have to suck it for another year,” he said.
During an extensive consultation last year, Cleaver said, “much play was made… about the ability to deliver discounts based on locality, frequent users, postcodes, all kinds of things were held up in front of communities as a way of getting them to buy into the process”.
He had expected a new fare structure would be “done and dusted and implemented by last June”.
Council performance and improvement adviser Jim MacLeod said it had not been possible to gather all the necessary data last summer.
Referring to “quite tense” relations with staff at the time, MacLeod explained that to impose a greater workload on employees already under pressure “was seen as too dangerous and could have very much backfired on the council and worsened industrial relations”.
SIC infrastructure director Maggie Sandison said it was imperative that detailed data was collected before making major changes.
“If you make a clunky decision about just increasing fares, it can have a dramatic effect on behaviour and usage,” she said.
But Henderson remained “very disappointed” by the delays. “The new fare structure should have been coming in last year to catch the tourists,” he said.
“We’re having constituents in Fetlar burning our lug for the simple reason they’re paying several thousands a year to access low paid jobs in other islands… to the stage where they’re thinking it’s better off to sit on the dole.”
Henderson wants some residents to be able to purchase half price fares. “That would go a long way to relieving the burden of residents in both Unst and Fetlar,” he said.
SIC leader Gary Robinson and convener Malcolm Bell both said their sympathies lay with the North Isles members.
Robinson said offsetting fares for islanders by charging tourists more seemed “desirable”, but warned that care must be taken not to diminish the number of people visiting places like Yell and Unst.
“If it is the case that the reduction in visitors, or reduction in available spending money, has an impact on the economy, the person in the low paid job may not have a job at all in those circumstances,” he warned.
Since timetables were cut last year, more than 70 per cent of businesses, commuters and personal travellers felt the new sailing schedules are “significantly less convenient”.
The environment and transport committee heard how cutting ferry spending by £3 million had resulted in the loss of 32 jobs, while the 825 weekly sailings have been reduced to 727 in winter and 742 in summer.
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