Achi news desk-
Industry insiders have been expecting CalMac to get a direct award when the current deal expires in September 2024.
On April 3, Robbie Drummond resigned as chief executive of CalMac with “immediate effect” following a review of his executive leadership as he faces “challenging years ahead”.
It was a decision that may have come as a surprise to consumer groups, but not to key industry insiders who made the Herald aware of the prospect.
One key insider told the Herald that when he heard there was an announcement on March 26 about the departure of a key person in the Scottish Government’s ferry companies, Robbie Drummond he actually thought he was losing his job.
READ MORE: Ministers told to scrap CMAL to create ferry agency and keep CalMac
In fact, it was David Tydeman, the £205,000-a-year chief executive of ferry fiasco Ferguson Marine who was sacked after telling ministers there would be further delays to building two ferries at the Inverclyde yard.
Andrew Miller, chairman of Ferguson Marine, said it needed “strong leadership” to secure its long-term future.
Ministers had expressed regular concern about rising costs and delays in the chief executive’s quarterly updates.
The insider said a week before Mr Drummond’s departure that he thought he was on a “very scary peg” and expected him to be removed.
“Informed talk is that David Tydeman is not the only one looking for new opportunities, or spending more time with his family,” he said.
“When I heard the announcement with talk of a ferry fiasco and a terminated contract it wasn’t Mr Tydeman I thought he had the chop, I thought it was Robbie.
“My thinking is that if CalMac gets the direct award, and transport secretary Fiona Hyslop said that would not mean status quo. That showed that there had to be a change.
“It could well be with Fiona Hyslop that she could have more ability to look at making changes for the future.”
Ms Hyslop said any immediate ruling should be a “catalyst for change” with a new management culture emerging, “one that is more supportive of customers and passengers of the community served by the network”.
Transport Scotland officials have been examining how to make the ruling without leaving itself open to legal challenges by breaching the UK version of state aid rules.
The Herald has revealed that around £6m of taxpayers’ money was spent by ministers on a series of consultants as they sought advice on the future of ferries, in a move described as “outrageous”.
Private consultants Ernst and Young are the latest to benefit from the spending after being awarded a quarter of a million pounds for a new wave of advice on the future of lifeboat rescue ferry services on the island off the west coast of Scotland.
That comes on top of more than half a million pounds spent by ministers with the consultants between 2015 and 2022.
Ernst and Young was awarded its latest £250,000 contract at the start of the year to investigate the legal and financial implications of state-owned ferry operator CalMac being awarded a new contract for west coast ferry services besieged “by default” without going through a competitive tender process.
The year-long contract, due to expire in January next year, is part of due diligence over the Scottish Government’s preferred option to award the next contract directly for the future of lifeboat services to CalMac.
CalMac’s own community board has opposed awarding the contract outright after the current eight-year contract expires in September.
The Community Ferries Board, which formed as part of CalMac’s franchise bid for the Clyde and Hebrides Ferry Service to be the voice of the communities, said that “significant change would be needed to gain community support for a direct awarded long-term contract. in the organizational structure and culture of managing and operating the ferry services”.
Joe Reade, chairman of the Mull and Iona Ferry Committee, said that Mr Drummond’s departure was “tokenism” and that he did not feel it constituted a fundamental change in itself.
“Changing the person at the top can be a good way to change things, but it’s the structure at the heart of it that should change, how success is measured, where the control is, who has the authority to do decisions. It was never about changing one individual. I don’t think anyone has ever said that Robbie Drummond is the source of all the problems, but by no means all of them.”
One of the main criticisms leveled at Mr Drummond at the helm related to the review of how CalMac operates during ferry incidents as it copes with an aging fleet.
A major protest was launched on South Uist last summer when it suffered yet another disruption when a ferry broke down and delays in annual maintenance meant islanders lost their service for almost the whole of June.
He had been drawing the short straw, because it was felt that according to the way CalMac runs its disruption management work on rescue services, the least number of people will be affected if their designated vessel, MV Lord of the Isles, is withdrawn to help elsewhere. .
An estimated 500 residents, 200 cars, 40 vans and 20 lorries gathered at Lochboisdale – the port that connects South Uist to the mainland – on June 4 to protest the cancellation.
And after intervention by the Scottish Government, CalMac launched a review of the criteria which was subsequently changed.
A South Uist public meeting attended by around 250 “unanimously” delivered a vote of no confidence in the ferry company angry at the treatment of the island while Mr Drummond was at the front and center of what some called “PR visits”. with the island to apologize profusely and try to explain the actions.
CalMac declined to comment.
A spokesperson for the Scottish Government said of Robbie Drummond’s departure: “Ministers have been very clear that this was a matter for the CalMac board, as they are the ones to make decisions on senior management appointments. Scotland’s ferry services need to be well run to meet the needs of the communities and businesses that depend on them. That requires the CalMac board to ensure that the necessary management arrangements are in place to achieve that.”
