The Coastguard SOS campaign group continues to raise concern about risks to sea safety and environmental protection resulting from substantial understaffing in the national coastguard service. This is happening in the wake of the progressive introduction of a new model service, which will see the closure of half of the UK’s familiar coastguard stations.
There is reason to take cognisance of this situation in the short term, locally because it impacts on the sea area encompassing Argyll and the Isles.
Grasp the scale of a single sea area from the south end of the Mull of Galloway northwards, including the Irish coast from and including Carlingford Lough on the east coast, round to Lough Foyle on the north – and stretching north to Cape Wrath to include the Inner and Outer Hebridean Isles and the Western Isles. The Caledonian Canal, from the top of Loch Linnhe, inland to Fort Augustus, also falls within this area.
You’re effectively looking at the entire west coast and islands of Scotland; and the entire coast and islands of Northern Ireland.
Responsibility for this immense and complex sea area is shared by two Coastguard stations – Belfast in its south east and Stornoway on its north west.
The Coastguard SOS campaign has shared with us data obtained under Freedom of Information from the Maritime & Coastguard Agency (MCA) – for shift manning levels at the UK’s coastguard stations in 2012 and 2013.
We have noted both the campaign’s press release and a response we have had to it from the Maritime and Coastguard Agency. We have independently evaluated the stances of both and have produced our own narrative from the base data shared with us.
These figures released do present an overall picture of real concern, with some stations recording extraordinarily high percentages of failures to meet the minimum safe manning levels.
This picture is, however, a transitional one. While it is reasonable for the authorities to anticipate its later normalisation, there is nevertheless a current safety deficit which may continue for the next couple of years, which cannot but put maritime and environmental safety at significantly increased risk – and which requires prompt and responsible address in the short term.
This safety deficit appears to be aggravated on a seasonal basis – a matter which can surely be addressed.
The FoI figures show that during the unusually warm weather in the summer of 2013, shifts at every one of the stations were understaffed for 88.7% of the time. The four months of June, July, August and September, showed drastic reductions in shift manning, subject to local permutations of the specific months worst hit.
During the Summer months, shifts at all MRCC’s were understaffed – up to 88.7% [Thames] of the time.
This is of concern since warm weather famously encourages the unprepared and the unable to take to the open water in swimming and in all kinds of craft and improvised flotation devices.
Implementation of a new model service
The coastguard service is in the process of a major transition to a very different system of coastal maritime protection and incident management – from the traditional sea area coastal stations to a centralised command and control centre at Fareham in Hampshire, with a reduced number of outlying Maritime Rescue Coordination Centres [MRCCs].
A spokesperson for the Maritime and Coastguard Agency says: ‘Under the future structure, the introduction of the ‘National Network’ as part of the modernisation of HM Coastguard will enable the National Maritime Operations Centre and all other centres to coordinate any incident around the UK coast. This will enable workload and incidents to be managed nationally rather than locally as at present.’
The degree of understaffing in the service undoubtedly reflects issues with staff departures and morale in the transition to what has been a disputed new system – reliant on a heavily staffed south coast command centre and with lean and efficient coastal MRCCs at wide intervals around the UK mainland and island coasts.
Understaffing will also reflect the natural wish of potential recruits to wait and see how things shake down before committing to applying for jobs in the service.
Any operation in transition suffers all of these phenomena. It is reasonable to assume that when the new system in mature, the staffing and what we can only call the ‘engagement’ situation will normalise. By ‘engagement’ we mean the extent to which current understaffing may be aggravated in its impact on shift manning levels by a higher than normal level of staff indisposition.
The system in transition
The new system sees nine out of the original eighteen UK coastguard stations closing, three of them already gone – with Scotland’s Forth then Clyde stations the first casualties, followed by Yarmouth.
Solent and Portland are to go this September [2014], followed in November by Brixham; with Liverpool, Swansea and Thames to close in 2015.
The new National Maritime Operations Centre at Fareham will start trialling systems and operations this Spring with a target Go Live date of September 2014.
Once it is up and running, the retained Maritime Rescue Coordination Centres will progressively transition to working in the electronic network commanded from Fareham. Falmouth and Holyhead will link in this year, with Falmouth first in October and Holyhead in December.
The rest will follow in 2015, with Milford Haven in February, Humber in April, Aberdeen in July, Shetland in August, Belfast in September, Stornoway in October and the last two, Dover and London, in December.
The impact of change
The transitions for some individual retained MRCCs in this new system are twofold:
- taking on extended sea areas, covering the areas of responsibility left vacant by the stations which are closing;
- and making the transition to the new system commanded from Fareham in Hampshire.
Of the stations facing both of these challenges, the greatest concern has to be for the adjacent MRCCs at Holyhead and Milford Haven. Both of these will undergo the transition to command from Fareham and the following month – while Fareham and the new system are still new and possibly raw edged, they will also take on the extended sea areas left vacant by closing stations and for which they have been given added responsibility.
Holyhead will transition to the Fareham National Maritime Operations Centre [NMOC] in December this year 2014; and take over Liverpool Coastguard’s sea area as that station closes in the following month, January 2015.
Milford Haven will transition to Fareham NMOC control in February 2015 and take over Swansea’s sea area the following month, in March 2015.
As the Maritime and Coastguard Agency says, any stresses in understaffing at an MRCC will be addressed by ‘pairing’ it with another station, so that the ‘pair’ station can take up some of the strain in difficult periods or in the event of a maritime incident.
But here we are looking at two adjacent stations, a natural ‘pair’, which will be successively under periods of stress with two serial major transitions to new operations and expanded responsibilities.
Consider a major incident in, say, the Bristol Channel, during the 4-6 month period while these stations find their feet in working arrangements which are not just new to them but new to all concerned – and with an NMOC potentially untested in action. Such an incident is more likely than not to be met by systemic inability at that stage.
The nearest other MRCCs are Belfast and Falmouth – both distant and both with massive new responsibilities of their own.
The strains of transition – on the Scottish west coast
The FoI data on Belfast MRCC, now responsible for the southern and central sector of the Former Clyde Coastguard sea area, including Argyll and the Isles, provides clear evidence of the impact of the transition to the new system.
In the first three months of 2012, Befast coastguard returned an impressive zero failure rate for shift manning. Only Liverpool [to close] and Milford Haven returned so sparkling a performance in safe shift manning over that period.
Then the reality of the consequences of the introduction of the modernisation programme began to percolate and shift manning figures went into decline, as the staffing impacts outlined above began to manifest themselves. Belfast went from zero straight to a 41.7% failure rate in April 2012, with an average of 37.19% failure in the nine months from April to December 2o12.
Tellingly, December 2012 was the month of final closure of Clyde Coastguard – and the month where Belfast recorded its worst by far failure rate in safe shift manning for 2o12 – 72.6%.
This worsened over the following two months, January and February 2013, with Belfast recording successive and worsening failure rates – including a five month period where its lowest failure rate was 77.4% and its highest 85%.
After an 80.6% rate its performance slowly improved to 8.1% in October; since rising again monthly to 13.3% and 17.7% respectively in November and December 2013.
Belfast’s average failure rate for 2013 of 56.94% was the highest of all of the UK MRCCs. Interesting, as a retained station this performance is shamed in comparison with Brixham – which is to close. Brixham turned in low failure rates of 3% in 2012 and 4.13 in 2013 [the best performance of any UK MRCC and facing death in November 2014, before it will record another full years' performance]. This says a great deal about the will and focus at that MRCC. Respect.
For the Scottish west coast as a whole, it has to be noted that in July 2013, Belfast and Stornoway MRCCs, as ‘paired’ stations, could not between them make up a single station manned to the minimum agreed safety level. In that month, Belfast’s failure rate was 80.6% and Stornoway’s 21%, making a combined total failure rate of 101.6%. The total sea area for which they are responsible is vast, with a spectrum of serious risks and a particularly valuable marine environment to protect. We got away with it last year, but what if we hadn’t?
Good news from the MCA is that they have now achieved a full staffing complement at Belfast, so we would now expect the situation there to start to stabilise. We have inquired whether, since the overall staffing level there has reached its complement, the problem with undermanned watches has been resolved? A station staffed to complement level but perhaps overworked or suffering from morale problems may still experience a higher level than usual of staff indisposition, with resulting undermanning of shifts.
Belfast makes its transition to Fareham NMOC control in September 2015, so it will have 20 months to build around the full complement of staff it now has.
The strains of transition – on the Scottish east coast
Aberdeen was initially to be the sole retained MRCC for Scottish waters.
AS what that meant sank in, shift safe manning levels were markedly hit, with Aberdeen MRCC going from a 21% failure rate in March 2012 to a whopping 96.7% in the following month of April. From then on it has barely been below 45%, with its highest low since, so to speak, October 2012, at 74.2%. Tellingly, this was the month after the closure of Forth Coastguard, with Aberdeen taking on the northern part of Forth’s sea area – the first station to have to extend its responsibilities in this way under the incoming operational model.
Since then, Aberdeen’s safe shift manning levels have been unimpressive but they have improved. The station’s average safe shift failure rate for 2012 was 50%, down to 39.88% in 2013.
Shetland and Humber recorded the most stable safe manning level of any UK MRCC in 2012, with no fewer than 9 zero failure rate months each. Shetland recorded three zero rates in the generally much tougher 2013, again hte best JK MRCC performance.
With Aberdeen taking on the northern part of Forth’s former sea area, Shetland has had its own sea area extended, taking on more of the Scottish north coast – from memory this may have been to ease Stornoway’s load, after it took on part of Clyde’s northern area. The original and unrealistic plan had been for Belfast to take on Clyde’ s entire sea area.
Where now?
The issue that shook public confidence in the new plan to which the coastguard service is transitioning was the ill-considered and seriously underinformed nature of the modernisation proposal as it was first put.
This would have seen Aberdeen, on the Scottish east coast, the only station for the entire waters and coasts of Scotland and its Northern and Western island chains.
The closure of all of the other Scottish coastguard stations was also to be accompanied by the removal of the two ETV’s [Emergency Towing Vessels] stationed in the north to cover The Minches, Orkney and Shetland, with cargo ships on constant passage through the Minches and the oil industry’s infrastructure and maritime traffic a long familiar feature for the northern isles and the east coast.
Concessions wrung from the MCA in well evidenced public protest by campaigners and intervention by the Scottish Government have seen the Shetland and Stornoway MRCCs reprieved – and one ETV, moving between bases near Stornoway and near Kirkwall in Orkney, retained for a short term period at public expense.
The Coastguard SOS campaign group insist that the modernisation process must be halted immediately because critical understaffing is putting people in danger. Speaking on behalf of the campaign group, Dennis O’Connor says: ‘We urge the Transport Select Committee to use its power to force a review of the closure plan now that it has been proven that the MCA and DfT are failing to keep control of the spiralling staffing issues’.
The campaign group’s problem is that while the original plan was risibly unsafe and the House of Commons’ Transport Committee’s series of reports on it consistently critical, the Department of Transport and the MCA bulldozed on regardless and without obstruction.
Real politique suggests that the campaign can only be on a losing wicket in asking for a reversal or even a halt to the process. That may nor be fair but it is inevitable. Stations have closed. Staff have gone. Fareham is to start testing this Spring.
The campaign is correct, though, that staffing levels are not in control and that there is a period of real risk to people and the environment from undermanning levels until the new system is full operational, familiar, tested in action and has inspired confidence.
There may be recently retired and experienced officers who have now made the personal transition to being outside the service and might be glad of short term assignments to bolster manning until the new model can fly solo.
The Coastguard SOS campaign might productively become the advocate for and the enabler of that process; and the MCA must surely have budgeted for safe manning levels throughout the system at all times.
Note: the FoI data on existing MRCCs failures in 2012 and 2013 to achieve agreed safe minimum shift manning levels is downloadable here: 2013v2012MRCC-StaffingV3.docx