Isle of Wight ferry firms WILL allow passengers to stay in their vehicles amid coronavirus fears. The Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA) - which regulates the Island’s ferry companies - has performed a u-turn. Just last week, the MCA ruled out the possibility of travellers staying in their vehicles. As previously reported by Isle of Wight Radio, guidelines had stated that vehicle decks on ships did not meet the required safety standards. However, Red Funnel and Wightlink will now allow passengers to remain in their vehicles on some crossings. From tomorrow (Thursday) until further notice, the following vehicle ferry crossings with Red Funnel will be restricted to “vehicle deck only” crossings, whereby the main passenger accommodation areas will be closed, and all passengers must remain in their vehicles. Departing Southampton: 6.00pm & 9.00pm Departing East Cowes: 7.30pm & 10.30pm Meanwhile, Wightlink says from tomorrow (Thursday) some sailings on the Portsmouth – Fishbourne routes will operate on a ‘remain in-vehicle’ basis.
The St Clare ship will be used for this purpose, she sails on the even hour from Portsmouth (06:00, 08:00 etc) and the odd hour from Fishbourne (07:00, 09:00 etc).
The changes mean no foot passengers will be carried on these sailings, passenger lounges will be closed and shops and cafés will not be open.
There will also be no access to onboard toilets from the vehicle deck so customers should use the facilities provided at Portsmouth and Fishbourne terminals before departure.
All other services (both Portsmouth-Fishbourne and Lymington-Yarmouth) will operate in the usual way with all customers leaving their vehicles after embarkation and spending the crossing in passenger lounges.
Bob Seely MP for the Isle of Wight told Isle of Wight Radio: "In regards to travel, I said yesterday we needed two things to happen now; to allow people to stay in cars and to enable the ferry firms to talk to each other. "The first, to allow people to stay in cars, is now happening. This is important and gives reassurance to everybody, but especially high-risk groups and those travelling to the mainland for medical treatment and whom may have lowered immunity. "The second, to relax competition law to allow the ferry firms to talk to each other to enable resilience planning, we are still working on. I want movement from Government on this shortly.” “I want to reassure Islands that all of us in positions of responsibility are working together to make the Island’s case and to lessen the impact of this serious situation on the Island and on Islanders." Fran Collins, CEO of Red Funnel said: “We’d like to thank the MCA for working with us to identify solutions to allow our passengers this option during this exceptional time. Many of our customers have been in touch in recent weeks to request that this option be available and while we empathised with their requests we were legally unable to oblige until now. The MCA’s decision to provide a temporary exemption to this aspect of the safety code which applies to our operation is unprecedented and required a great deal of cooperation and lateral thinking from all parties. "I’m very pleased that we are now able to provide a solution to our customers and thank our customers for their patience as we seek to adapt our operation as quickly and efficiently as we can.”
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