Two and a half years after P&O Ferries attracted widespread condemnation for sacking 800 UK staff and using an agency to replace them, the brand is in the news again. Transport Secretary Louise Haigh recently said she had boycotted the company since the scandal, describing it as a “rogue operator”. In response, parent company DP World reportedly put the announcement of a £1bn investment into the UK on hold.

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer stated that Haigh’s stance did not reflect the government’s view. Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology Peter Kyle later confirmed that the investment would go ahead.

But the story focuses the spotlight on the public's view of P&O Ferries. YouGov BrandIndex data shows that while there has been some progress in P&O Ferries’ brand health since its lowest point during the controversy, it remains some way off where it once was.

Impression scores, which measure general sentiment, sat at 19.0 on 17 March 2022, plunging to  -57.3 on 14 April 2022. While P&O Ferries has crept up to 1.7 as of our most recent data (13 October 2024) – making perceptions just about positive overall – its brand is yet to fully make up the ground it lost.

Reputation scores, which ask if consumers would be proud or embarrassed to work for a company, tell a similar tale: they were at 15.3 in March 2022, fell to -52.2 a month later (19 April 2022), and have recovered to 1.3 as of October 2024.

Index scores, an overall measure of brand health, tell the most comprehensive story: at 13.3 on the day the redundancies were announced, these scores plummeted to -35.2 by April 2024. They have climbed back up to 2.3 – but P&O Ferries is still a more unhealthy brand than it was two and a half years ago.

While P&O Ferries may not have been holed below the line by the crisis, it’s clear from Haigh’s comments and our data that the damage to its public perception is taking a long time to repair. Will the investment announcement do anything to bring the brand’s reputation back from the depths?

This article originally appeared in City A.M.