People’s port plan for Dover

Dover MP Charlie Elphicke has outlined his alternative plans for a “people’s port” to buy the UK south east ro-ro hub after management embarked on a controversail privatisation process opposed by the ferry companies and local people.

The newly elected Conservative MP proposes that a Dover community trust would issue bonds on the financial market, raising enough cash to buy the port, competing with a rival proposal from Dover Harbour Board to raise £400m ($620.3m).

DHB’s proposal, currently before the Secretary of State at the Department for Transport, has been fiercely opposed by Dover ferry operators P&O Ferries, SeaFrance and DFDS Seaways, the latter formerly known as Norfolkline.

The DfT extended the deadline for submissions on the DHB proposal until the end of next week, while a separate complaint by P&O Ferries and DFDS, concerning the port user tariff at Dover, also reaches its DfT deadline next week.

Mr Elphicke said: “Members of the local community would sit on the board of a newly established community trust, sitting alongside ferry operator management and chambers of commerce officials.

“Any person in resident in the Dover area can be a member of the community trust, if they pay £10.”

The MP, elected in May this year, added: “Half of the board would be elected by the membership. They would sit alongside port users, chambers of commerce and elected representatives of the community, such as the mayor.

“The trust will issue bonds in the market to buy the port, secured on the revenue from port users. The ferry companies have said that they support the model and liked the idea.”

Mr Elphicke, who last night presented his plans to a full meeting of the local council, before a packed public gallery, said: “The Town Council is making a revised presentation to the secretary of state, to say that he should consult and consider the people’s port proposal.

“The minister should organise it so that the people’s port can have a chance. My hope is that the Secretary of State will allow time to enable a fully costed and funded proposal to be put together in order for a bid to be made.”

Mr Elphicke, a former tax lawyer, said it would “not be right” at this stage to talk of financials, but added that the port sale be within the range the Treasury is looking to achieve.

He continued: “The community trust would own the port company, run by management to make sure there is proper governance of the port.”

Asked who would run Europe’s largest ro-ro hub if the people’s port proposal won the day, Mr Elphicke said: “Clearly, that is a matter for the port trust, in consultation with the users.

“The existing management is highly competent and runs a very safe port, and a lot has to be said in how the management have run the port in the last few years. The operations of the port are excellent, and one would seek to maintain that.”

Dover’s privatisation row comes at difficult time for the cross-Channel ferry market undergoing a vicious rates war for freight and passenger traffic.

P&O Ferries has warned that job cuts may be necessary, SeaFrance is in the hands of the administrator and another operator, LD Lines, has scaled back on its Dover Boulogne operations.

The chief executive of P&O Ferries, Helen Deeble, has pledged the company’s support for Charlie Elphicke’s people’s port proposal.

Mrs Deeble said: “P&O Ferries welcomes any proposal which ensures fair charges, protection from excessive future increases, a long term partnership approach that also benefits the local community and we look forward to going through the detail in due course.”

She said Mr Elphicke’s plan was preferable to the proposed Dover Harbour Board privatisation scheme as it “differed in structure and genuinely seemed to have the interests of local people and the port users at heart”.