DFDS has withdrawn a proposed summer ferry service between Jersey and Guernsey after Guernsey's Committee for Economic Development rejected the plan. The operator had intended to run the route with the Stena Vinga, linking the islands on a Friday evening sailing from Jersey to Guernsey and an onward departure to Portsmouth.

The reversed service would have brought the ship back from Portsmouth to Jersey on Monday afternoon. With that plan now off the table, DFDS said affected customers are being contacted directly and will be offered refunds.

The withdrawal ends a short-lived attempt to add a summer inter-island link between two Channel Islands that have long depended on limited ferry options. DFDS said it still believed there was value in improving links between the islands and remained open to further discussions about future inter-island connectivity.

Instead of the cancelled crossings, DFDS said it would add sailings to St Malo on 6 and 20 July and 3, 17 and 24 August, using dates that had been set aside for the inter-island service. It also said it would add an extra sailing on 2 July in response to demand from passengers travelling to the Le Mans 24 hour classic motorsport event in France.

The gap between the service DFDS wanted to run and the one Guernsey refused is now the central point. The company had built its summer plan around a weekend pattern designed to move passengers between Jersey and Guernsey and then connect them onward to Portsmouth, but the rejection means that idea will not go ahead this season. What happens next depends on whether the two islands can find common ground on a future route that both sides will accept.