The House of Commons’ powerful Public Accounts Committee has issued a report on the regulation of UK merchant shipping which expresses concerns about the staffing situation at the Marine and Coastguard Agency (MCA).

It says that the MCA has both staff vacancies and an ‘ageing’ survey workforce responsible for ship inspections.

The Committee would like to see the Agency move away from its current stance of simply responding to identified shortcomings and start carrying out more ‘surprise’ safety inspections.

While noting that the register of UK-flagged ships is maintaining a high standing in the industry, the Committee has seen: ‘signs that the quality advantage it has held compared to the rest of the world is narrrowing’.

The report expresses concerns that ‘the agency has shown no evidence of a robust and proactive strategy to recruit and retain the staff that it needs’. It notes a series of deficiencies it would like to see addressed, including:

• a ‘worrying’ resistance to change and a tendency to be reactive;
• an inability to commit to achieving its target of  of a 7% increase in the UK-flagged fleet each year from 2008 – 2012;
• has inspection targets described as ‘meaningless’;
• had no clear marketing strategy to attract quality shipping to UK flagging.

The Herald reports Edward Leigh MP, Chair of the Committee, as saying: ‘Back in 2002 we warned the agency that it needed to recruit and retain more marine surveyors. It still lacks a proper strategy for doing this’.

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