New CalMac ferries delay after safety changes ordered

Sea trials of the Glen Sannox have been delayed until next year

A Calmac ferry being built at Ferguson shipyard faces further delays after safety regulators demanded design changes.

Extra staircases will have to be installed on the Glen Sannox in order to satisfy the Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA).

The work means planned sea trials of the Glen Sannox have been delayed until the first quarter of next year.

More details of the impact of the changes will be given next month.

The announcement, which has also seen delays to the commissioning of the Glen Sannox's fuel system, will raise concerns that the ship will not be in service with Calmac in time for the start of the summer season.

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Once the Glen Sannox is handed over to CalMac, the ferry operator will need to conduct its own trials and on-board training, a process which could take up to eight weeks.

Ferguson Marine previously said the Glen Sannox, which will operate on the busy Arran route, should be operational in the spring of 2024.

The changes will also need to be made to the Hull 802 vessel being built by Ferguson Marine, but this is much further away from being delivered to CalMac.

Hull 802 will be delivered after the Glen Sannox

BBC News understands the MCA is concerned about passenger evacuation routes in the event of an emergency.

In a letter to Holyrood's transport committee, Ferguson Marine boss David Tydeman said he hoped to reach final agreement with the MCA in the next two weeks over a plan to make the modifications, which also includes widening some doors on the vessels.

He added: "This means the sea trials will move into the first quarter of the new year and the commissioning of the Liquefied natural gas system at Troon (which must be done after dry docking) will also be moved to after Christmas".

Both ships were originally meant to be completed in 2018 at the Port Glasgow shipyard for £97m, but the build has been plagued by repeated cost overruns, delays, mistakes and design issues.

A bitter dispute between the yard's former owner Jim McColl and government owned ferries agency CMAL saw the yard nationalised in 2019, with both sides blaming each other for what had gone wrong.

The final cost of building Glen Sannox and Hull 802 will now be more than £300m.

'Disappointment'

CalMac chief executive Robbie Drummond said that while new vessels were due to be delivered over the coming years, the operator faced a "difficult season ahead".

"CalMac is committed to serving island and rural communities with the best possible service, and we will do our best to navigate and adapt to the changing situation and mitigate the impact wherever possible," he added.

Transport minister Fiona Hyslop told BBC Scotland News: "As far as the Scottish government is concerned we will want to ensure that all the different agencies work together to get the Glen Sannox into sea trials, because it's nearing completion - that's why all these completions need to take place.

"Of course I'm disappointed that we've got a delay in what we need, which is resilience in the fleet.

"Any delays are clearly a disappointment to everybody, including myself as transport minister and of course the islands that are affected. But that resilience, that planning will be in place to ensure that island communities are supported."

It might seem bizarre that safety officials are demanding big changes to Glen Sannox six years after it was launched, but perhaps the shipyard is paying the price for what happened years ago. Work began on the ferry before its design was signed off by the authorities.

I'm told the engineering work required is not too big a challenge. They're only cutting through steel, and won't have to re-route the miles of cabling which lie behind some wall panels.

The next big hurdle is sea trials. They're due to take two months or so. But will they reveal hidden problems on board? This vessel's been tied up for years, and engineers wonder what may emerge.

With sea trials not set to start until the first quarter of 2024, it's unclear when the vessel will carry passengers.

CalMac is already short of ferries and really needs the Glen Sannox in time for the summer timetable, which begins in April. That timescale looks increasingly unlikely and that is bad news for island communities.

Scottish Conservative shadow transport minister Graham Simpson MSP said island communities would be "furious" at this latest delay.

He added: "It's ridiculous that at this late stage extra staircases are having to be installed, and doors widened, to satisfy safety regulations. These design requirements should have been ironed out years ago."

Scottish Liberal Democrat MSP Willie Rennie said: "Almost six years after Nicola Sturgeon held a fake boat launch complete with painted on windows, these boats are still needing design changes before sea trials can get underway.

"Islanders, taxpayers and shipyard workers have been hung out to dry."