In some towns or cities, the port is very high on the agenda of the local authorities and regional development agency: \u201cIn some cases, whenever we talk to a port, these bodies are also in the room,\u201d says Louise Gowman. \u201cBut in others, you get the absolute opposite \u2013 these bodies never get involved and are very hands-off.<\/p>\n
\u201cThen, sometimes a port has historically had no connection with the local authorities \u2013 but suddenly, realising that changes are coming, the local authority wakes up. Perhaps it owns land in the vicinity of the port \u2013 a sale could increase the value of that land. Or perhaps there are issues with local residents. Part of the process is trying to anticipate what might come out of the woodwork.\u201d<\/p>\n
In parallel to the trust ports debate, there is an increased willingness by shipping lines and other companies to \u201ctake quite a robust view of being pushed around by port authorities\u201d, says Mike Burns, a partner in the marine and transit team at Weightmans, based in Liverpool.<\/p>\n
\u201cEffectively ports are in a monopoly position and in terms of privatisation there is a wider legal issue here. Users could be impacted if ports change the way they do things or the way they are set up \u2013 including their mode of charging and way of treating port users.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are certain port companies that have a dominant role and I think there seems to be an environment where people are willing to flex their muscles a bit more. This year has seen a number of regulatory battles going on, and we may see this increasing in the period to come.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Trust ports can also find themselves facing very different views from potential \u201cstakeholders\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"sponsor":[],"class_list":["post-3301","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-concessions-investments"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3301","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3301"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3301\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3301"},{"taxonomy":"sponsor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sponsor?post=3301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}