Common themes from business sector

• Many businesses feel they are becoming unsustainable. Any future developments are on hold due to uncertainty. Many businesses cannot operate to their full potential due to the loss of income and reduction in customers. Therefor many are forced to reduce their operating hours both within each day or even reverting to seasonal opening hours. This damages these businesses but also the destinations and communities they also serve. This leads to a loss of employment and money circulating in the economy.
• Reputational damage is hard to overcome, even repeat business is dropping dramatically due to uncertainty. Visitors in particular don’t trust the links but suppliers are also less willing to deal with islands. Those that do charge extra for uncertainty of vehicles and getting back. This increases costs significantly.
• Ferry unreliability causes population loss and a loss of workforce. In turn it is hard to attract workforce to the island due to negativity of connectivity. Free under 22 travel would be a big help.
• The number of agencies involved creates a system that produces poor and slow decisions. It doesn’t feel like the islands are the customer in the present contractual set up it feels as if Transport Scotland are the customer. There is no effective performance reporting and the statistics coming from contract reporting don’t seem to relate to reality. There seems to be a lack of organisational skills in the system.
• Unmet demand is never considered or measured. It is a major tool for service improvement and revenue maximisation in any other industry. Similarly, visitor increases are never matched with capacity increases causing sectoral conflict.
• Visit Scotland analysis has confirmed the importance of tourism to island economies.
• Lack of capacity for freight is stifling economic growth which in turn is bad for the country. There is a need for replacement freight ferries on Northern Isles and separate freight runs on west coast.
• Time sensitive products such as seafood and shellfish need reliability to reach markets.
• Inter-island connectivity is very important in getting goods to market. Allowing local decision making can ensure unintended consequences are minimised.
• A freight fares review has never been concluded.
• Good integration of public subsidy and private entrepreneurship can bring best results.
• Island businesses should be entitled to business compensation for loss due to poor performance. This was the case in Edinburgh for tram works and in Glasgow for business affected by School of Art fire.

Animal Transport: No awareness shown of time limits attached to animal travel. NFU had worked on developing protocols but no consistency in application. Care shown for dogs in passenger lounges but animal needs not considered and difficulties for owners trying to get animals to market as humanely as possible. Also the implications when they are prevented from travelling in terms of when can next travel and where they can be kept safely.