Wishart pushes Scottish Government on island resilience following Storm Amy

Beatrice Wishart, MSP for Shetland and Scottish Liberal Democrat, has today pushed the Scottish Government on what actions it will take to improve island resilience, following disruption caused by Storm Amy at the weekend. 

Speaking during Topical Questions, Ms Wishart highlighted the power cuts across Shetland, telecommunication issues at Sumburgh Airport cancelling commercial flights on Sunday and Monday morning, and loss of broadband provision for many after damage to the SHEFA-2 cable between Orkney and Shetland, for which there is not yet an estimated time of repair. 

Ms Wishart asked the Cabinet Secretary for Justice and Home Affairs what engagement the Scottish Government has had with communications providers and NATS, the National Air Traffic Services, about the disruption and how it will work to improve resilience. In response, the Cabinet Secretary said that the Scottish Government is reaching out to resilience partnerships and promised a further update. 

Commenting after the exchange, Ms Wishart said: 

“Storm Amy has once again highlighted the precarious nature of telecommunications in Shetland. The disruption to broadband connections and the cancellation of flights show the scale of the impact when telecommunications cables are damaged. 

“Having previously emphasised to the Scottish Government the need for improved resilience in Shetland after the major telecommunications failure in 2022, and subsequently raising various telecomms issues, it is disappointing that the Cabinet Secretary offered no detail on the Scottish Government response to this latest disruption. 

“Adverse weather events are likely to become more frequent, and it is crucial that vital telecommunications networks in Shetland have more resilience to deal with the disruption that these bring.”

Ms Wishart’s exchange with the Minister can be viewed here.

The text of the exchange is as follows (please check against delivery): 

Beatrice Wishart MSP: Storm Amy saw communications go down in Shetland for the second time in three months. There have been power cuts, telecommunications issues at Sumburgh Airport which cancelled all commercial flights on Sunday and Monday morning, and broadband provision dropped completely for many after a fault occurred on the SHEFA-2 cable between Orkney and Shetland. As yet there is no estimated time of repair for the cable. What engagement has the Scottish Government had with communications providers and the National Air Traffic Services, or NATS, about this significant disruption and how will it work with them to improve island resilience? 

Angela Constance MSP, Cabinet Secretary for Justice and Home Affairs: Ms Wishart is quite correct to raise the importance of island resilience. Our island communities are by their very nature are very often more resilience than households like mine that reside in the central belt but nonetheless given the geographical isolation of our island communities we all need to work harder across Scotland to ensure that that resilience response is spread out. I am most certainty aware of the difficulties experienced in Ms Wishart’s constituency over the weekend and would reassure her that whether its Ministers or indeed their officials that we are reaching out to every local resilience partnership on an entire range of issues and I will get a further update to her about the very important matter around communications and telecommunications in her constituency.