IN THE 12 months since the announcement was made from the Scottish Government that the ferry would be staying in Ardrossan, work has been slow and mainly ongoing behind the scenes.

But local politicians and members of the Ardrossan Harbour Taskforce say that real change is afoot and with last week’s announcement about the choice of design, it looks like the works will be starting very soon.

Kenneth Gibson MSP said: “The taskforce has been working behind the scenes and it includes everyone from CMAL, Transport Scotland, the government, Calmac, NAC and we are all involved in taking this forward.

“Over the past few months we have been looking at issues in terms of how the vessel is going to fit in the harbour and what the best design will be.

“Because there is no planning permission required, Peel can actually start and both Peel and North Ayrshire Council have agreed that the wet side of things will be Peel and the landward side would be NAC.

“They are working well together and it is a case of crossing the i’s and dotting the t’s before getting work started on site and obviously with the new ferry coming next year, and once the harbour is increased it will have a dramatic impact on capacity and also it will minimise the disruptions.”

Joe Cullinane, Leader of North Ayrshire Council is also positive about the last 12 months of work and added: “When we got the decision last year that we were successful, the discussion I had with the Transport Minister was about re-establishing the Taskforce.

“So that has been done and alongside that, where things are reported and decisions are being made, Karen Yeomans has been leading a stakeholders steering group where they have been looking at the sort of mechanics of the works, the simulations and the options. They have been reporting back and that has taken quite a bit of work and there was some issues with the simulations but that has been sorted out and we are now in a position where they are much more accurate and the design that was agreed at the last taskforce meeting is showing that there will be improved reliability for the people of Arran and that is why we have made the decision to go ahead with that design.”

Not everyone is entirely positive about how quickly things have moved and Jamie Greene, Conservative MSP for the West Region, says that more has to be done to ensure that the campaign was not for nothing.

He said: “There were conditions attached to this, that things would improve. There was a reason why there was some unhappiness with the status quo but especially for those on the Arran side who probably voiced more concern than those on the Ardrossan side about this, for them, they wanted a reliable service that is cost effective and can operate in reasonable conditions and has good connectivity at the other side and perhaps some people on Arran weren’t that fussed.

“A lot of promises were made but a lot of them haven’t come to fruition.”

Executive Director for Economy and Communities at North Ayrshire Council, Karen Yeomans, explained what her main role has been and said: “We formed the project group early summer last year. Our relationship had been with Peel Ports and Transport Scotland but as we were going into the next stage of detail and design, it was important that we had Calmac and CMAL who provide a lot of technical advice.

“Fairly quickly it was clear we had to look at different options, the option we proposed was one but there were better options and we had to think through what that meant.

“We went back after the summer break and said we need to look at broader options and then we went through them all and we have been refining to make the recommendation to the minister.

“The new ferry, the existing ferry or any other ferry will have much more moving space which will see a more resilient service and that should hopefully mean less disruption and everyone gets a better service.”

Patricia Gibson MP added: “The new ferry has been launched and getting the harbour up to scratch and since then we have appear to have made slow and very tentative progress on the Ayrshire Growth Deal but with Ardrossan that is predicated by the harbour. It is just about moving that forward.

“The ferry was built for specification and I think we have to be positive, we have the new ferry and now it is about the harbour being fit for purpose.

“It’s very easy for people to be negative but we are making progress, we kept the ferry at Ardrossan, we’ve got a brand new, state of the art ferry and work is going on in that direction.