SWANSEA FERRY: Report promised £15 fares, but the leader ‘couldn’t tell you’ what a ticket would cost

What would a ticket on the Swansea ferry cost? Council leader Rob Stewart says he couldn’t tell you yet.

The report behind the proposed crossing promised fares from £15, and almost 98% of the 4,300-plus people who answered its survey backed the idea.

The question came up at Thursday’s full meeting of Swansea Council. Penllergaer independent councillor Tony Fitzgerald said that figure depended on the question people were asked.

Ask people whether they are in favour of a ferry to the south west and they will say yes, he said. “If the question was, ‘Are you prepared to go on the ferry at a cost of £150 return?’, you might get a very different answer.”

Swansea ferry fares: ‘People are not going to run ferries for free’

Cllr Stewart’s first answer was arithmetic. On his maths, he joked, 98% meant “at least two people said no”.

On the fare itself, he pointed to the cost of not sailing. Driving round to the south west can take two and a half hours or more, he said, and with current fuel prices that is already expensive.

Pricing would be part of the economic model the ferry’s backers bring forward, he told the chamber. “At this point in time, I couldn’t tell you what the fares would be.”

Cllr Fitzgerald offered a benchmark. Crossings to the Isle of Wight cost about £240 return, he said, “and that’s where you’ve got three companies in competition”.

That did not shake the leader. “People are not going to run ferries for free because they cost money to run,” he said, but a greener option at “roughly the same price” as driving would draw passengers: “I’m sure lots of people will take it.”

Who paid for the £25,000 Swansea ferry report?

The report cost £24,999.95 of UK Shared Prosperity Fund money, paid out through Swansea Council. That is five pence under £25,000, the value above which Welsh Government procurement policy commits councils to advertise contracts more widely on Sell2Wales, its public tendering website.

Clydach independent councillor Brigitte Rowlands wanted to know which of its key assumptions had been checked before “spending almost £25,000 of public money on it”.

Cllr Stewart rejected the premise: “This is not money that we have spent as a council. This is shared prosperity money.”

Council officers had judged the bid against the fund’s criteria, he said, and he would not “second guess” them.

Nor is the ferry drawing on council budgets, he said: “We’re not putting council money into this. We’ve not been asked to put council money into it.”

In written answers last week, he called the crossing “not a council proposal”.

He accused Cllr Rowlands of continuing to “repeat something which I believe to be inaccurate”, insisting he and the chief executive had met councils in the south west about the idea.

Her former Conservative colleague Alun Cairns “is on record as lobbying” for a ferry to ports like Barry, the leader added, and there had been talks about building ferry facilities into a tidal lagoon planned near Minehead.

Cllr Rowlands said she would pass on to him where her information had come from.

Passengers alone ‘challenging’: what a Swansea ferry would carry

Making a service pay on passengers alone would be “challenging”, the leader said, which is why its backers are looking at roll-on, roll-off ferries and turn-up-and-go services. In March he said it would carry freight too.

They are also working out how vessels could move from diesel to hydrogen, he said, with more detailed proposals expected “in the coming months”.

Swansea ferry ‘could feature in an election campaign’

Uplands Party councillor Stuart Rice asked whether another ferry update was likely around March or April next year. Cllr Stewart said he thought he knew where that question was going.

If there were “a really good opportunity for Swansea that could potentially be delivered in the next five years”, he said, “I’m sure we’d want to talk about that in an election campaign”. Swansea’s next council elections are in May 2027.

Cllr Peter May wanted to know whether the leader’s earlier offer of a one-way ticket to the south west still stood. “Depends what the cost of the ticket is, I guess,” came the reply.

Councillors get their next go at the report on Tuesday 3 November, when the leader and chief executive Martin Nicholls face the scrutiny panel.