by Graham Tutthill

A ferry company is to lodge an official complaint against Dover Harbour Board in the row over privatisation.

All three major ferry companies have described their consultations with port management over the port privatisation plans as "a meaningless waste of time".

They said the talks had not made "one iota of difference" to the concerns they have been raising with Dover Harbour Board for months.

Now P&O Ferries say they have been left with no choice but to make a pricing complaint to the Department for Transport.

Norfolkline also plans to make a similar complaint to the government and is deliberating whether to take the case to Brussels under European competition law.

SeaFrance managing director Robin Wilkins described the Harbour Board as "completely intransigent".

Helen Deeble, chief executive of P&O Ferries, said she had written to Shipping Minister Mike Penning telling him talks with DHB were over and her company would be submitting an official complaint.

A spokesman for Norfolkline, SeaFrance and P&O Ferries said: "The whole exercise has been completely pointless. DHB has ignored everything we have said and we now believe they are simply playing for time, keeping us at bay while they hope their privatisation approach goes through on the nod in next week’s budget."

The ferry operators embarked on consultations in March following a joint statement on March 10 in which they expressed their "profound disagreement" with the port’s plans to privatise and over its use of £60m of their money provided to fund Terminal Two. They are also objecting to a massive increase in port charges that will see their tariff rise more than 33 per cent by 2012 compared with 2009.

The companies learned that having paid excess tariffs for three years to fund the new terminal, because Dover’s non-profit making trust port status meant it couldn’t borrow the money from other sources, its development was no longer an immediate priority due to the privatisation process and recession and they were alarmed to discover there would be no obligation on the new owner to actually build it.

They learned that the port planned to spend the cash on its pension fund deficit to smooth the path to privatisation and also intended increasing their port dues by more than a third to build up a further cash pile.

A spokesman for the Port of Dover said: "We were unaware of the statement by the ferry operators and are continuing discussions with them in order to reach a positive outcome."