THE port owners of Troon Harbour this week made claims that the town had a formidable record of handling the loss-making P&O ferry service to Larne - which hasn’t run between the ports for almost a year.

Associated British Ports said that in the final three years when it ran a full service, 2007-2010, just 15 services were cancelled and said that as many as 253 services between Ardrossan and Brodick had been cancelled.

But these figures do not go into the detail that the Troon-Larne service only ran twice a day, equating to around 724 ferries whereas the Ardrossan to Brodick route between July 2015 and July 2016 had 4,497 sailings, more than six times as many.

During this time there were 298 sailings cancelled but broken down it shows that 126 of these were due to technical issues with one of the ferries, 16 of these were due to fog and 130 were due to weather above 35 knots, which affects almost every Calmac service across the network and would also affect Troon and last week highlighted this as the Isle of Arran vessel came into contact with the seawall at Troon when seeking refuge and had to be helped by a tug boat.

Stuart Cresswell, Manager of ABP’s Port of Troon and Ayr, said: “There has been a significant degree of misinformation reported about this question of reliability but the P&O data cuts through the spin and makes it plain. Troon would offer the people of Arran a transformation in the reliability of their lifeline ferry service. Crossings to Troon would continue to run in conditions where services to Ardrossan would have to be cancelled, with all the misery that entails for local people.

A spokesman for Peel Ports said: “ABP really should make sure their own house is in order first, as shown by last week’s incident when the Isle of Arran ferry tried to dock at Troon Harbour and had to be rescued off the harbour wall by a tug when it got stuck due to wind.

“ABP is trying to compare apples with elephants. Troon’s failure rate is despite the vessel being far bigger and more modern than the ageing ferries which will be replaced on the Arran route next year. The new, £49m state-of-the-art ferry designed specifically for the Ardrosssan-Arran route will dramatically improve sailing reliability in all conditions and its huge increase in bow-thrusters will prove particularly beneficial.

“Far from being more reliable, Troon can only offer a longer, slower, more expensive and less frequent alternative to Ardrossan.”