Scottish ferries contract hit by fresh delay

One of the two vessels being built for CalMac as part of a controversial ferries contract has been delayed until 2024, it has emerged.

The vessel, currently known as hull 802, was expected to enter service between October and December next year.

But Ferguson Marine has now said that the vessel will not be ready until the first quarter of 2024.

The two vessels, hull 802 and the Glen Sannox, will be more than £150m over budget and five years late.

The news emerged the day after a BBC documentary uncovered evidence of a number of irregularities in the awarding of the original £97m contract.

Documents obtained by BBC Disclosure indicated that Ferguson Marine benefited from preferential treatment.

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The Scottish Conservatives have called for a police probe into the suggestions that the process may have been rigged.

Government-owned ferries agency CMAL has defended the procurement and said an audit in 2018 found "no adverse issues".

However, Scotland's Auditor General has now been asked to investigate.

Deputy First Minister John Swinney said he was concerned by findings in Tuesday's BBC Disclosure programme, but said it was not the place of government to call in the police.

First Minister Nicola Sturgeon later told Holyrood she had not seen any evidence of criminality in the procurement and construction of the ferries, but she insisted coming to that conclusion was "not my job".

The delay to the completion of hull 802 emerged in a letter from Ferguson Marine to Edward Mountain, the convenor of Holyrood's transport committee.

The company described the delay as "disappointing", but said it expected the handover to be complete for the 2024 summer season.

The Port Glasgow shipbuilder's chief executive officer David Tydeman said issues including "deficiencies in work planning" experienced with Glen Sannox and "inadequate rigour in stock control and handling" had caused the latest delay.

He also pointed to "errors made as the business recovered from administration and mobilised through the pandemic".

Structural completion of the vessel, which had been planned from September 2022, has now been moved to late November this year.

That means practical completion is now set for the end of December 2023, with final dry docking and trials being completed by the first quarter of 2024.

Mr Tydeman said while the move of the handover date was disappointing, it represented a "positive more professional approach, for a realistic and deliverable handover for the summer season '24".

The bulbous bow being lifted into place on Hull 802

The Scottish Conservatives described the latest delay as "beyond shambolic".

The party's transport spokesman Graham Simpson said: "Island communities are suffering - and will continue to suffer for at least a year-and-a-half longer - as a result of the SNP's epic incompetence.

"This is a shameful scandal and it's time the SNP took responsibility."

'Confidential meeting'

The BBC Disclosure documentary uncovered evidence of a number of irregularities:

• CMAL may have broken its own rules by allowing Ferguson to go ahead with its bid despite being unable to provide evidence of a builders refund guarantee, a mandatory financial safeguard.

• Ferguson obtained a 424-page document from a design consultant setting out CalMac's technical requirements, while other bidders had to rely on a more limited 125-page specification. A key section of its bid was mostly cut-and-pasted from this longer document

• The shipyard was allowed to significantly change its design halfway through the tender by developing a variant mentioned but discounted in its original submission.

• This change also allowed it to reduce its price by nearly £10m, making it more competitive

• CMAL assessors held a "confidential" meeting with Ferguson, the only bidder to receive an in-person meeting

The Port Glasgow shipyard fell into administration in August 2014, but was bought a week before the independence referendum by Jim McColl, a businessman who sat on First Minister Alex Salmond's council of economic advisers.

The following year his new firm, Ferguson Marine Engineering Ltd (FMEL), won a £97m contract to build two dual fuel LNG vessels for state-owned ferry operator CalMac.

But the project has been beset by problems and the yard has been nationalised after going back into administration.

The delays have added to pressure on CalMac's old and increasingly unreliable fleet.

The Arran route, where the first ship was due to enter service in 2018, has faced more than 2,500 cancellations in the past five years.

CMAL said in a statement that new information contained in the programme would need to be "carefully investigated".

It added that some staff employed at the time had now left.

It said its board had voiced concerns to Transport Scotland about the contract award to Fergusons, particularly in relation to the lack of refund guarantees, which were well-documented.

Disclosure: The Great Ferries Scandal

Mark Daly investigates what went wrong at the Ferguson shipyard, and raises questions about the tender process that saw the contract awarded in 2015.

Watch now on BBC iPlayer