The Highland Council has announced that Uig Harbour will close for eight weeks from Monday 16 January, to allow for the next phase of works to safeguard future ferry services.

The planned and programmed outage is required for works to replace life expired infrastructure. The works during this stage will include dredging the existing berth, installing new fender pile sockets, demolition of part of the existing pier slab, extraction of piles, piling of new linkspan dolphins and bankseat.

Chair of the Council's Economy and Infrastructure Committee, Cllr Ken Gowans said: "These works at Uig are essential to ensure the ferry services on the Skye Triangle route can continue to serve communities and visitors for many years to come. This will be the first temporary closure and work has been planned and programmed in a way to get as many key work activities completed over the 8 weeks. I recommend travellers look at the service continuity plans that CalMac are putting in place and follow the links to the timetable information.”

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He added: "The Skye Triangle Resilience Group, which includes the Minister for Transport and all project partners met on Monday 19 December 2022 in advance of the first outage and will meet throughout the outage periods with community representatives to provide regular updates on the works and will address any issues that arise.”

In addition to these permanent works, The Highland Council's contractor, RJ McLeod, will install a temporary bridge to span between the existing linkspan and the existing pier. This will allow the ferry operations to recommence on Monday 13 March 2023 for normal operation of the summer timetable in 2023. The temporary works will also include the installation of protection piles adjacent to the new roundhead construction area. This will allow the contractor to continue piling the roundhead whilst the ferry is operating.

Robbie Drummond, Chief Executive of CalMac, said: "The closure of Uig harbour means that we have had to find the best alternative options for our customers, and we have tried to keep disruption to a minimum for them.

We will be building on communications already in place to remind passengers about the closure and support them with the information they may need."