The scheme was established by Comhairle nan Eilean Siar, the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), HIE Innse Gall and the Western Isles Fishermen’s Association (WIFA).

Loans of up to 40% of the project costs are available, with a maximum loan of £100,000 for buying a fishing boat.

Under the scheme, CNeS guarantees 50% of each loan agreed by the RBS with new entrants to the industry and with established fishermen. The council has now reached its loan guarantee limit of just over £1m, but pressure is mounting for new fishermen to enter the industry and for existing fishermen to invest in new and more efficient boats. So far only one applicant out of 67 has defaulted. This was dealt with internally by RBS and the call of the council’s guarantee resulted in the council having to pay out £12,000 during the period of the loan scheme’s operation.

Duncan MacInnes, secretary of WIFA said the record of the scheme was exemplary. “The scheme has brought about an investment of over £7m in new boats and has created or safeguarded 160 jobs, without counting the processing jobs onshore. If you look at the £12,000 it has cost the council for one default, that works out at £75 a job, which must be one of the best job creation records of any publicly financed scheme in the UK,” he said.

He said that fishermen were rigorously scrutinised before they received a penny. “They have to put together a robust business plan and depending on the age and size of the boat, they have to invest a certain amount themselves to get the loan from the bank. As long as the figures are correct, there should be no danger that the council’s guarantee will have to be called in. Out of over £7m invested, the industry itself has contributed around £1.5m of that total, in addition to paying back the loans. Fish processing companies have also loaned money to the fishermen and that is repaid from their earnings. HIE Innse Gall have contributed to the costs of new equipment. That mix ensures that over £8m of fish and shellfish have been landed that would not have been there without the fisheries loan scheme.”

He added: “The guarantee limit has been reached and that means that no help is available for new fishermen until more of the loans have been repaid. The Council’s Fisheries Joint Consultative committee agreed to ask the council to increase the guarantee level to enable more fishermen to take advantage of it.”

The Council has also invested £700,000 in 570 tonnes of West Coast nephrops quota. In the first full year of leasing, 364 tonnes was leased to nine separate boats, four of which had been supported through the fisheries loan scheme. So far this year another 150 tonnes has been leased to another six fishermen, four of whom were assisted through the fisheries loan scheme.

Mr MacInnes said: “Instead of buying the quota, the fishermen lease it and that has meant that in Barra for example there are now seven trawlers based there, more than at any time since Barratlantic came to Barra 30 years ago. That would not have happened without the fisheries loan scheme and the community quota scheme. We are fairly sure that the whole quota will be leased by the end of this year and we would hope that the money earned through the leasing would be used to buy more quota. That means that the quota will be retained in this community. Historically this community lost quotas of herring, mackerel and whitefish and if that had been retained, these sectors would also be much stronger in the islands. I doubt very much if we will ever get the chance to get these quotas back again.”

www.fishupdate.com is published by Special Publications. Special Publications also publish FISHupdate magazine, Fish Farmer, the Fish Industry Yearbook, the Scottish Seafood Processors Federation Diary, the Fish Farmer Handbook and a range of wallplanners.

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