Written evidence submitted by Comhairle nan Eilean Siar, Shetland Islands Council and Orkney Islands Council (“the Islands Strategic Partnership”) (CISFL0021)
Explanatory Note:
This submission is written by Comhairle nan Eilean Siar, Shetland Islands Council and Orkney Islands Council - the local authorities serving the Western Isles and Northern Isles of Scotland.
It offers a high-level analysis of the three local authorities' views on inter-island connectivity, and is designed to complement the more detailed submissions from each local authority.
The three local authorities - under the leadership of Independent Councillors Paul Steele, Emma Macdonald and Heather Woodbridge, supported by Chief Executives Malcolm Burr, Maggie Sandison and Oliver Reid - have agreed a strategic partnership to negotiate with the Scottish Government and the UK Government on shared opportunities and concerns. We refer to this as “the Islands Strategic Partnership” for the remainder of this submission.
Introduction:
The Islands Strategic Partnership was created in mid-2025 because we believe our interests have never been more closely aligned, and that the opportunities our islands can offer the rest of Scotland and the UK have never been greater. Our three islands make an enormous contribution to the Scottish, and UK economies, and have the potential to do even more, particularly in renewable energy, aquaculture, fisheries, tourism and the space industries.
Between us, we have:
● Enough Scotwind licenses in our territorial waters to power every home in Scotland three times over (that does not include proposed INTOG sites or the onshore wind we already produce)
● 13% of the oil and gas produced in the UK in our waters
● Contribute half of Scotland’s GVA from aquaculture (Scottish salmon is the UK’s biggest food export), and one-third of Scotland’s seafish GVA
● Three rapidly growing cruise ship ports, which now {INSERT STAT HERE}
● One-third of the RSPB’s Scottish bird reserves; two of Scotland’s six UNESCO World Heritage Sites; Scotland’s only dual World Heritage Site; the only Scottish UNESCO Global Geopark; and the key sites in neolithic Scotland
● Europe’s first fully licensed vertical orbital launch site, with the capacity to perform 60% of all of Europe’s orbital launches (SaxaVord Spaceport in Unst, Shetland), and the UK’s only dedicated commercial sub-orbital launch site (Spaceport 1 in North Uist, Western Isles).
Scotland’s economy is increasingly moving out of urban centres towards rural and island settings like ours. Scotland and the UK, therefore, will become increasingly dependent on our islands, and we want to play our part in national success.
However our ability to contribute fully to Scotland and the UK’s future is constrained by underinvestment in infrastructure and the continued demographic challenge which poor infrastructure accentuates.
Without targeted and substantial investment in connectivity, our potential will remain under-fulfilled.
Question 1: What are the current transport challenges facing Scotland’s island communities, and how do these challenges impact communities? (This could include but is not limited to: economic development, population retention and access to services.)
The local authorities which comprise the Islands Strategic Partnership represent the most remote and rural communities anywhere in the UK.
The Western Isles is comprised of 19 populated islands, which are linked to one another by:
● Two bridges (which link Great Bernera to Lewis, and Scalpay to Harris);
● Five causeways providing a link through Bernerary, North Uist, Benbecula, South Uist and Eriskay
● Another causeway linking Vatersay to Barra
● A series of smaller causeways maintaining population on the smaller, more remote islands.
There is no fixed link between Harris and Berneray/North Uist, or between Barra and Eriskay/South Uist (these were identified for investigation in the Scottish Government’s second Strategic Transport Projects review (STPR2) just over three years ago, but no further action has been taken).
The Shetland Islands comprises 16 populated islands. There are:
● Five small bridges, three of which connect the Mainland to Trondra, then to West Burra, then to East Burra, with another connecting the Mainland to Muckle Roe, and the final one linking two of the Skerries.
● However nine of its islands, including the two most populous, are served by ferries and planes.
Four of these routes have been identified as having potential for tunnels, and Shetland Islands Council is currently engaged in a Fixed Links Model (FLM) Study with international experts COWI and Stantec, which will offer us the most detailed information we have ever seen on the contractor and financier appetite for tunnel building in Shetland, and elsewhere in Scotland.
There are 20 inhabited islands in the Orkney Islands, split between the North Isles and the South Isles. In addition to the Mainland of Orkney, the most populated island - with around twice the population of any other - is South Ronaldsay.
● South Ronaldsay is the largest island connected by the Churchill Barriers, four causeways which link South Ronaldsay to Mainland Orkney through Burray, Glimps Holm and Lamb Holm.
● Thirteen remote and rural islands in Orkney are served by ferries
● Six are served by air, to supplement the infrequent ferry service.
The internal transport challenges which face all of us in our Islands Strategic Partnership are the same; a heavy reliance on increasingly ageing ferries and reducing capital budgets which limit capacity to maintain and improve our infrastructure.
Ageing ferries are:
● Increasingly susceptible to breakdown
● Less resilient in poor weather
● Less likely to be compatible with modern motor vehicles
● Less likely to be accessible
● More likely to be highly carbon emitting.
The impact of the reliance on ageing ferries is felt in every area of our economic and social existence. Our people rely on ferry services to get to work, to school, to medical appointments. Local businesses rely on them to move staff and to move products. A weather event or a breakdown can have severe consequences for people, families and business.
Furthermore, the additional costs involved in moving goods makes the building of homes (which we need to house the families of workers in our new industrial opportunities) so expensive that the value of a new-build home on day one is almost always less than the build cost.
Ultimately, all of these factors drive depopulation.
However, both new ferries and fixed links would come with a cost far too large for the small local authorities in the Islands Strategic Partnership to bear. We would need significant outside investment.
Question 1.1: Which communities, if any, would benefit from fixed-link connectivity in the Scottish Isles, and in what ways would they benefit?
There is variability in the relative benefits of fixed links to different communities across the three island groups. In some cases, particularly in Orkney, community demand is for improvements in the ferry fleet. There are clearer cases for fixed links in the Western Isles and Shetland. The question with which those local communities grapple, rather than whether fixed links are a good idea, is how can such a link be sustainably financed.
Tunnels across the Sound of Barra and the Sound of Harris were identified as options by the Scottish Government in STPR2, however there has been no output in the three years since then.
In reality, closest to actually building fixed links is Shetland Islands Council, with Yell, Unst, Bressay and Whalsay all being considered as part of the work being undertaken for it by Stantec and COWI. All islands in the Islands Strategic Partnership would benefit from this work being taken forward and from tunnels being constructed in Shetland - helping to provide a clear understanding of best practice for construction and financing.
Question 1.2: What are the downsides to fixed-link infrastructure, if any?
We have not experienced significant downsides through our experience of bridges and causeways, although the comments above on reducing financial capacity to maintain infrastructure should again be noted. It is worth noting that the capacity of local authority staff to deal with road closures and issues is highly limited, and therefore Police Scotland would have to be part of the conversation around management of these assets.
Question 2: What is the potential return on public investment in fixed-link infrastructure projects in Scotland’s island communities?
Between our Islands Strategic Partnership, we have multiple examples of the demographic benefits of fixed links. Although there are no tunnels to cite, we have clear evidence of the success of causeways and bridges; this represents a significant social return on public investment.
In the Western Isles, for instance, without causeways and bridges, it is likely that islands such as Bernera, Scalpay, Berneray, Vatersay and Eriskay would be severely depopulated. The newest fixed link is the 2001 Eriskay causeway; Eriskay’s population had dropped by 60% in the previous 50 years, but since the causeway it has started to rise again, by nearly 20% in 20 years.
Shetland’s bridges between the Mainland, Trondra, West Burra and East Burra were built around 75 years ago, in 1971. In the 40 years previous, the population of Trondra had collapsed from 91 to 17. In the 40 years after the bridge was built, it rose from 17 to 135. In West and East Burra, the pre-bridge population fell by more than one quarter to 565, before rising post-bridge by over 50% to around 850 today.
In Orkney, it is reasonable to assume that the existence of the Churchill Barriers - the fixed links which join South Ronaldsay and Mainland Orkney - is the major contributor to the health of South Ronaldsay’s population. South Ronaldsay has a similar land mass to Sanday, Rousay and Westray, and around one-third that of its South Isles neighbour Hoy, yet has at least double the population of them all. The populations of South Ronaldsay and Burray (also part of the Churchill Barriers) have risen around 10% in the last 10 years; the populations of Westray, Rousay, Sanday and Hoy have all fallen.
Repopulation of remote and rural islands is essential not just for the sustainability of our communities, but in the interests of advancement in nationally important industries. The most obvious economic return on public investment would come via the growth of industries such as renewable energy, aquaculture and satellite launch.
In Orkney, for instance, most of the finfish farms are located off islands unconnected to Mainland Orkney (the same is true for around one-third of Shetland’s finfish farms). In Shetland, over 200MW of onshore wind farms are located on Yell, unserved by a fixed link. Further north, Unst is home to the SaxaVord Spaceport, and over in the Western Isles Spaceport1 is located in North Uist, which is unconnected to the main centres in Lewis and Harris.
Easing transit between the centre of industry and the centre of our islands would inevitably open up the opportunity for lower costs and more growth.
We also anticipate a return on public investment in terms of public service efficiency. The cost of bringing ‘remote’ islanders to our centres for education, healthcare, work and onward travel to the rest of the country, is high and increasing. Fixed links may give us the opportunity to reprofile aspects of our public service provision.
Question 2.1: What role, if any, could the UK Government play in supporting fixed-link infrastructure, given the devolved nature of transport policy?
Transport policy is devolved to the Scottish Parliament under the Scotland Act, and in many cases further to local authorities. Nonetheless, the economic activity on our islands is of national importance, and furthermore the cultural significance of island life cannot be overestimated.
It is therefore the case that we have a potential disconnection between the beneficiaries of our industry (the whole country) and the responsibility for our infrastructure (partly the Scottish Government, but largely us as local authorities).
The UK Government, in recent years, has appeared to acknowledge this disconnection in its policymaking. Over the last 12 years the UK Government has created, with Scottish Government support), city-region growth deals. The local authorities represented by the Islands Strategic Partnership coalesced then, forming the Our Islands, Our Deal group and successfully negotiating a favourable Islands Growth Deal.
Further south, and more recently, the UK Government provided direct funding to Transport Scotland for a feasibility study on improvements to the A75 in Dumfries & Galloway, in recognition of its importance to the UK as the link road from Northern Ireland, through Scotland, to England and ultimately onto Europe.
The precedent is there for the UK Government to intervene if it so chooses. In the first instance, the Islands Strategic Partnership would strongly urge the Scottish Affairs Committee to recommend UK Government involvement in any Shetland Islands Council-sponsored project for inter-island tunnelling. The next stage of this project will require investment well beyond that achievable by a local authority the size of those in our Islands Strategic Partnership, and as islands considering our future options for inter-island transportation we need demonstrable insight and evidence about the viability of tunneling. Such intervention would provide valuable learning and experience for other areas also considering the provision of fixed links in all their potential forms.
Question 3: What lessons can be drawn from international case studies, such as the Faroe Islands’ tunnel network?
We understand that the aforementioned submission by Shetland Islands Council, and another submission by COWI, will explore international evidence in greater detail. We will therefore defer to their specific insight.
Question 3.1: How have fixed-links impacted these communities? This could include but is noted limited to population trends, labour mobility and economic development.
However we have considered a paper written in 2022 by Landsverk, which oversees roads and harbours in the Faroe Islands.
In “Removing the Island Barrier: Socio-economic impact of tunnels”, Landsverk concluded that:
● The population of islands with ferry connections tends to decline, whereas there is a correlation between tunneling and population strength
● There is a correlation between tunnelling and a reduced average age on the connected island
● Islands connected to the mainland by tunnel tend to see an increase in average income per capita
These outcomes accord with our collective, limited experience from the causeways and bridges already present on our islands. Crucially, we believe in the concept of connecting even the smallest communities, which we (and the Faroese) should have an equal opportunity to access our island centres.
It is also important to note and understand the financial model around the ongoing Faroese tunnel building project. The financing for the tunnels is through Public Private Partnerships underwritten by the Danish government, giving both the Faroese and the private investment vehicle the confidence to progress with the build. We assume that tunnels connecting Scotland’s islands would require a similar approach and a similar security offered by the UK Government.
December 2025