Katy Clark – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Transport

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Katy Clark on 2014-06-05.

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what recent assessment he has made of the Maritime and Coastguard Agency’s capacity to discharge its statutory duties to survey and inspect (a) domestic and (b) international shipping.

Stephen Hammond

The Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA)’s current business plan has an operational priority (OP) entitled: “OP2 – Ensuring our ship survey, inspection and certification capability, and the parallel work in relation to seafarers, meets our domestic and international obligations”. Progress against this operational priority is monitored on a monthly basis by the MCA Executive Board using a balanced score card system. By this method the MCA is able to assess its capacity to discharge its statutory Survey and Inspection duties.

The MCA monitors its capacity to discharge its statutory duties to survey and inspect (a) domestic (Flag State responsibility) and (b) international (Port State responsibility) shipping through a system of activity monitoring. Performance against these Survey and Inspection activities feed into the Balanced Score Card for OP2.