Can People Power create a new ferry service?

Monday 07 March 2016

A Jerseyman has called for Channel Islanders fed up with Condor to get together and invest in a new ferry co-operative after Condor raised prices this week.

Ian Barette has begun a campaign to get 1,000 Islanders to each invest up to £1,000 to set up a new CI Cooperative Shipping Company providing fast-ferry services to the UK.

In a post on Facebook Mr Barette says we are all ‘fed up with Condor their failure to provide an acceptable and reliable high speed ferry service to the UK’.

He suggests £10 million should be enough to get a new ferry service going and includes a link to a 1996 fast ferry currently for sale in Spain.

Less than 24 hours after posting his thoughts about Condor on Facebook, Ian’s post had over 1,500 likes and over 900 shares.

Mr Barette said: “I feel we need competition on our fast ferry routes and only by doing so will the service be brought up to the standard that the travelling public will accept. It will not only provide the backup service which is currently absent, but will also help to keep the prices at a competitive level.

“I am in business and understand the economic pressures that exist. I appreciate that setting up a new shipping company would be a very difficult task - the raising of capital and government bureaucracy being just the starting points.”Legal advice is being taken about options over Condor’s contract after the minister responsible said he had “lost confidence in their assurances that everything is going to get better”.

On the anniversary of the first sailing of Condor’s £50 million Liberation fast ferry – which has been beset by difficulties and breakdowns since it came into operation – the Economic Development Minister Lyndon Farnham said that he, like many Islanders, had run out of patience with the ferry firm.

Condor’s contract, signed in August 2014, still has another eight and a half years to run, but Senator Farnham says that he has asked lawyers to explore what options he has as minister.

But he said that there were no companies queuing up to take over the service from the firm.

Senator Farnham said: “I’m waiting for legal advice on the contract to see what options we have got.

“We have to remember that there is nobody waiting in the wings at the moment.

“Nothing would give me greater pleasure than for Condor to get it absolutely right and get the service that everyone deserves but I have lost confidence in their assurances that everything is going to get better.

“In the meantime, we need to be thinking about changes in the future.”

Although Mr Barette has been delayed every time he has used Condor over the past year, he admits he hasn’t been nearly as badly affected as the passengers who faced long waits, and days of cancellations earlier this year.

Mr Barette said: “Channel Islanders have genuine concerns about this lifeline service, so I believe that, like me, fellow Islanders would be prepared to invest in a co-operative shipping company that would then be able to provide that valuable third vessel. A company owned by islanders for the benefit of islanders.

“I‘m certainly not out to get Condor, who I feel do provide a good service in all other areas. I merely feel that we need another fast ferry to work the UK route and if it was owned by ourselves as a co-operative, it may have a better chance of survival. The majority of people who commented on my Facebook item have indicated likewise.”