Clyde Transport Ferry Group - Update
Added at 12:11 on 01 August 2025
We have received the following update from the Clyde Transport Ferry Group regarding the progress on discussions on the town centre to Gourock ferry route:
"While it has been fairly quiet, we have been moving in the background. Since we met with Cmal and Transport Scotland, Tom Warren, Michael Breslin and Alan Stewart have met with Scott Reid, head of harbours for Argyll & Bute council. This was organised by Councillor Ross Moreland who also attended.
We had a good discussion and we outlined what our plans were with the linkspan and associated area, and how we wanted to attract an operator to the route. Scott came armed with a number of quite in depth questions and I'm fairly confident he was satisfied with all the answers we gave. We asked how much it had cost the council to run the berth and Ross managed to find that it had cost the council in excess of £500k in the previous year.
It was an amicable meeting and it culminated in Scott offering to send us some information on the linkspan and its current state of health, we have still to see this yet though.
He also agreed that the council would allow a commercial operator to use the linkspan if we found one, and they would offer them a discount to their published charges. This could be useful if we are unsuccessful in the asset transfer bid.
David Clough (Dunoon Community Council) managed to get our group registered on the governments Find a Tender website, and we have been working on an Expression of Interest to be published on the site. This should be ready to go fairly soon. We are hoping that this will attract interest from existing ferry companies who may want to pick up the route. Tom has hopefully managed to get access to a list of UK ferry companies and I intend emailing a link to the tender to all of them. Unless there are any objections we will include Western Ferries in this mailshot, we have always said that we would be happy for them to bid.
Finally, Alan Steward has been in touch with the Community Ownership Support Service about the Asset Transfer, He has not yet started the process. The reason for this is simply that we dont want to end up with ownership of the berth and not yet have an operator in place to take it over. Once we start meaningful discussions with the operator we agree to go with the CAT process can begin.
Hopefully the Expression of Interest will get a few responses, at that point things should start to get busy! We will keep you updated on progress."