Maritime and Coastguard Agency
The Maritime and
Coastguard Agency is the UK Government agency responsible for
UK maritime policy and coastguard system. The MCA’s
responsibilities range from ship registration and regulation to
protecting the marine environment, from saving life at sea to
representing UK maritime interests at international forum such as
the International Maritime Organization.
Ship regulation activities include the development, maintenance
and enforcement of standards for vessels ranging from supertankers
to the smallest fishing boats. All commercial craft are covered
either by provisions of the Merchant Shipping Act or specific codes
for construction and operation. Inland craft are also covered,
whether passenger boats or freight vessels. All
commercially-operating manning activities are also regulated by
MCA.
There are currently codes for small commercial vessels covering
sailing vessels, motor vessels and workboats and one for large
yachts. The definition of small is up to 24m load line length. A
harmonised code for small commercial vessels was published in
October 2004 as MGN280, bringing
together all codes for small craft in one single document: this
code is not currently a statutory code. Large yachts (those over
24m load line length) are covered by the Large Yacht
Code LY2.
Codes and regulations for inland craft and operations, include
the Inland Waters
Small Passenger Boat Code,
Boat Masters Licenses and the new Hire Boat Code. A full
listing of such codes is available at the dedicated
MCA inland regulation webpage.
Private boats are also covered by regulations, in this case the
Merchant Shipping Regulations, enforcing maritime conventions such
as SOLAS and MARPOL. Of specific importance are the Fire
Protection and Life-Saving
Appliances regulations, which apply to all private boats over
13.7m up to 24m.
The suitability of the requirements of these regulations was
appraised in August 2002 and working with the industry, MCA were
able to issue exemptions from the general regulations to take
account of modern boat design. Enforcement of these regulations is
applied to the owner or master of the boat, although there are
issues for industry to consider for new boat sales. Full details of
regulation covering private boats are available from the MCA
leisure vessel webpages.