Toft Pier

[Wheelsup]

Piers have to be kept up. Is not the Sic "missing" the trick by not charging users. In this day and age they could log movements  etc by remote camera, from one of their other harbours. The SIC will be fully liable if anyone is injured by using their piers, perhaps the fishermen could build a private jetty?

 

I am sure the shellfish industry will be doing alright, thank you very much, its too much like hard work to do it for nothing.,but like any other business there are costs to be taken into consideration, such as upkeep of boats and piers etc.

 

As for Orcadian indivuals' success at marketing, maybe there's no somebody here with the gumption.

Edited December 5, 2016 by Wheelsup

[Skunnered]

On Shetland Radio they said that if all the landing dues had been paid, that would have come to about £68,000.  But they actually got less than £2,000.  So the SIC can hardly be blamed for not wanting to sink money into the pier.

 

Perhaps the fishermen who use the pier could pay for the repairs themselves, since they don't want to pay the landing dues?

[ll]

There's power at all the piers- and CCTV has been available for a long time for very little, so why not install this at all the piers. Enough folk sitting in harbour offices at Sullom and Scalloway to watch this to monitor landings. Surely more benefit than the provision of elaborate remotely monitored and updated sign telling cars sitting looking at the ferry they are catching will be leaving in 7 minutes?

 

If there was nobody on ferries collecting fares and nobody sending out council tax demands, don't think that there would be much appetite to fill up the council piggy bank when they have made such a lot of ass ups in the past and wasted hundreds of millions of pounds now with nothing to show.

 

If they are going to start cross examining every service they provide for profitability such as Tingwall Airport, all the ferry routes, all schools, da town hall, bus services, etc, would any of these wash it's face.

 

If SIC were to close down any unprofitable harbours and piers, would there be any open left open?

 

With NAFC being subsidised by the SIC at up to  £4.8m per annum. Part of what they have been doing is churning out figures of landings and their values by shellfish boats since it opened in 1993 for all to see. So why has it taken the SIC over 20 years to realise they are getting nothing near the proportionate dues they should have taken in. Why could they not see this ? Why did they need consultancy firm AB Associates to point this out? The SIC print out 'Shetland in Statistics' every year. Shellfish landings are detailed in this. Do they not look at their own information? Can they read? You wouldn't get a fleet of busses or taxis running around for 20 years before someone realised that maybe they should be getting an income from their services provided?

 

The SIC have completely failed here and as usual have demonstrated again that they have no commercial sense whatsoever.

 

Like the Sullom tugs, new AHS at the Knab, Sumburgh runway, Viking energy, White House, the Cluness Crossing to Bressay - no one is ever accountable for the continued string of haulix they keep being allowed to make. There is no fear by anyone, so the serial cock up entrepreneurs will continue their established pattern.

 

Businesses don't look to cut back to maintain services, they look to increase revenue and profitability. Landing dues have increased most years, but the penny never dropped that X % increase on nothing is still nothing. 

 

Whilst this is unbelievable, it is entirely believable.

[ll]

Goes from bad to worse!

[Colin]

I don't pretend to know the "in's and outs" of this but, it would appear to me that if the SIC had some proper mechanism for collecting dues and, if the scallop fishermen had been a little more honest(?) in declaring their landings then, they (the fishermen) might have had a much stronger case against closure of the pier.

 

As others have pointed out;

The SIC has failed miserably on several high profile projects whilst, at the same time, failed to maintain some of it's "core" facilities.

 

I can only imagine that someone, somewhere has taken their eye off the ball (or never had it on the ball in the first place).  No problem though.  They won't get the sack for it.!!  After all, the people concerned are not "business people" and don't have a clue when it comes to running a business.  They just exist to suck up public money for little or no return, issue "dictats" whenever they feel it appropriate to do so and, all this at no risk of repercussions to themselves.

[Ghostrider]

I don't pretend to know the "in's and outs" of this but, it would appear to me that if the SIC had some proper mechanism for collecting dues and, if the scallop fishermen had been a little more honest(?) in declaring their landings then, they (the fishermen) might have had a much stronger case against closure of the pier.

 

"Don't ask, don't get", comes to mind. If any pub, or numerous other "facilities" relied on folk being "honest" about how much they'd had, I predict they'd all be bankrupt before a month was out.

 

What's being ignored in this discussion, is the bigger picture. Is this a wholly "one off" unique circumstance, or it it symptomatic of how things are everywhere.

 

*If* the council is as lax collecting dues at all its piers as they've been with this one, and those using Toft knew/suspected that, its highly unreasonable for them to be expected to pay top dollar, when their competitiors weren't, especially when their pier was the worst one of the bunch. If things are run more competently at other piers, then what in hell happened here, and why would the SIC suppose those using Toft would pay up as well as the rest if they weren't being chased for it the same as the rest.

 

Additionally, while Toft my be the first to "fall over", it has more to do with which bit(s) were the worst bits on which pier, than maintenance being any better/worse there than elsewhere. Scalloway this spring had numerous pieces of rotten wood on the pier edge, that had had the rot painted over so long ago that the paint was flaking off due to age. Whalsay has pier edging where the concrete is worn down to expose the steel reinforcing bars.

Edited December 7, 2016 by Ghostrider

[MAMAMOOMOO]

The issue of landing dues has been dreamed up by the council to divert attention from their incompetence. They built the Fetler pier on an island with no boats with no hope of ever getting any landing dues .  After the new Yell ferry pier was built they simply gave up maintaining the old pier.

They have demonstrated once again that they are utterly incapable of fulfilling their duties as a port authority. And now its come home to roost.  

 

AGAIN !

[magnie ii]

The issue of landing dues has been dreamed up by the council to divert attention from their incompetence. They built the Fetler pier on an island with no boats with no hope of ever getting any landing dues .  After the new Yell ferry pier was built they simply gave up maintaining the old pier.

They have demonstrated once again that they are utterly incapable of fulfilling their duties as a port authority. And now its come home to roost.  

 

AGAIN !

dreamt up surely its a fact that they don't pay does this mean i can stop paying my council tax and business rates and it will be ok

[tubstardelux]

I remember reading in The Shetland Times that the Ports and Harbours had saved over a million £'s in one financial year thank to "Maintenance slippage", a fancy term for not doing the work they had planned to do. I'm sure it would be clear to most people that "maintenance slippage" is never a saving, only the delay of a cost which will only increase. 

Edited December 8, 2016 by tubstardelux

[fatface]

A sheet pile pier is constructed by basically building a box of pile sections, filling it with infill and capping it with concrete/tar or whatever. I understand that when the divers did the survey they could look in a hole in on side of the pier and see clear daylight out the other. There is no infill left in the centre of the pier, it has all  been washed out the holes. This is not an occasional hole either, it is like looking through a colander. There is almost nothing holding the top surface of the pier up, which I guess gave the SIC no choice.

 

Are they not a lot of inshore fishermen who manage to work without an SIC pier? Burra and Cunningsburgh spring to mind. Also is this a case of Shetlanders getting used to having it good in the past, if you go around the Scottish mainland there are harbours dotted here and there and that is it, either drive there or stay there or don't bother. 

 

The piers are full argument doesn't sound believable either, I have seen the small boats in Fraserburgh tied up 5, 6, 7 + abreast, you don't see them more than single berthed in Shetland unless it is a flying gale. 

[ll]

Was amused to hear Maggie Sandison say last night, that 'over the last 2 or 3 days she has come to realise what an important facility the Toft pier is'.

 

Evidence would clearly suggest, she never looks at any of the following freely available reports (for 'her' piers). They had to get information from a consultancy firm to 'alert' them to the fact there were landings at Toft- rather than find this from annual reports.

 

http://www.shetland.gov.uk/ports/StatisticalInformation/Archive%20for%20all/Documents/Scalloway/SummaryOthrHarbours1314(2).pdf

 

https://www.nafc.uhi.ac.uk/research/publications/fish-stats/shetland-fisheries-statistics-2014

[Z O F O]

a

Edited December 8, 2016 by cyanide

[brecken]

I believe it's the latest SIC Chief A-Hole that want's all those external consultant's, which according to his department managers appear to be partially a consortium of his old mates from the Territorial Army (jobs for the Boys') with varying standards of reports and instances of getting eff all for the money.

Maybe they should sack the maintenance slippage manager at Sella Ness and employ someone capable of implementing and overseeing a proper preventative maintenance plan ensuring some future for what's left of our infrastructure before this irresponsibility escalates any further, we certainly don't appear to have these problems with LPA Piers, maybe the council could learn something from their practices or possibly use them as consultants to fill some of that huge Void they appear to have developed in their knowledge department.

[ll]

Probably best thing they can do in the short term is give free ferry travel to boats and landing collectors and let them use Ulsta or the community pier at Burravoe and get on with replacing or repairing asap. Altaire will likely be off again in 3 weeks time, so pier at Collafirth will be free then.

[lgray88]

There are no landing facilities at Ulsta other than  to carry your catch up the walkway to the pontoon and the slipway is constructed in a way that regardless of the state of the tide  theres never more than a metre of water anyway along its length ,theres nothing been mentioned of the landing permits where vessels under 15 ton could land at all council piers for a fixed yearly fee i would have thought boats using that  would have made it difficult to quantify what council pier they had landed at