Sarah Wollaston – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Transport

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Sarah Wollaston on 2016-09-05.

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what the average length of time is from joining for an employee to qualify as a (a) maritime operations commander, (b) maritime operations controller, (c) senior operations officer and (d) maritime operations officer.

Mr John Hayes

The length of time taken to train Coastguard Officers is entirely dependent on their level of experience and competence when they join Her Majesty’s Coastguard and the level of experience of competence they gain prior to any internal promotion. Therefore an average for these would be misleading.

On entry to HM Coastguard as a Maritime Operations Officer it will take between six and 12 months to become trained, depending on previous maritime experience and competence.

HM Coastguard do not recruit direct entry Senior Maritime Operations Officers, they are internally recruited from the cadre of fully trained Maritime Operations Officers who will then undertake a further six months of training for this post.

As roles that can be directly recruited from outside HM Coastguard the training for both Maritime Operations Controllers and Maritime Operations Commanders is entirely dependent on their prevailing maritime experience and is in effect bespoke for the individual concerned.

It should be noted that the roles senior watch manager, watch manager, watch officer and watch assistant no longer exist within HM Coastguard.