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The Maritime and Coastguard Agency today have announced a series of public meetings concerning the proposed Coastguard modernisation programme. The dates and venues for these meetings are listed below.
The purpose of the meeting is to provide an opportunity for the local communities around the existing Maritime Rescue Coordination Centres (MRCCs) to hear more about the proposals, ask questions of MCA representatives and have the opportunity to express their views. Each meeting will be independently chaired and will begin at 7:30pm, expecting to draw to a close by 9pm.
Forth - Thursday, 24 February 2011, Waid Academy, St Andrews Road, Anstruther, Fife. KV10 3 HD
Shetland - Monday, 28 February 2011, Town Hall, Upper Hillhead, Lerwick, Shetland. ZE1 0HB
Stornoway - Tuesday, 1 March 2011, Nicholson Institute, Springfield Road, Stornoway. HS1 2PZ
Clyde - Wednesday 2 March 2011, Port Glasgow Town Hall, 35 King Street, Port Glasgow. PA14 5HD
Kirkwall - Tuesday, 15 March 2011, Town Hall, Broad Street, Kirkwall. KW15 1DH
Ullapool – Wednesday, 16 March 2011, Macphail Centre, Mill Street, Ullapool, Ross-shire. IV26 2UN
The details of these proposals, together dates/venues for England and Wales plus the consultation documents, can be found on the MCA website at www.mcga.gov.uk
Rather disappointingly there appears to be no venue closer than a three hour drive from Oban. Hopefully at least one of our members will go to their local meeting and provide us with a write-up.
I can't frankly see myself driving the 40-odd miles to Anstruther (which is local to the CG station, right enough but a bit out of the way, by land, for the vast majority of Forth CG clients) on a Thursday evening. A shame really, I would have liked to hear what the MCA management say about local knowledge and indeed what 'daylight hours' means in relation to the higher latitudes covered by the more northerly stations. Thanks for posting Nick.
Well, I went to Pitoddrie last night. The place was set up for about a crowd of 200, but I think the sum total of 12 was about what turned up!
What does that tell you? Either people don't give a f**k, or they are happy to go along with the proposed changes.
There was a powerpoint presentation from the MCA’s regional director for Scotland, Bill McFadyen, then he asked for questions. Only 3 or 4 people, including me, asked questions, then we all went home.
I was expecting a fair crowd from the fishing/supply boat/leisure sectors, and a bit of lively debate, but it was all a bit of a damp squib in reality.
Rowana wrote:Well, I went to Pitoddrie last night. The place was set up for about a crowd of 200, but I think the sum total of 12 was about what turned up!
What does that tell you? Either people don't give a f**k, or they are happy to go along with the proposed changes.
There was a powerpoint presentation from the MCA’s regional director for Scotland, Bill McFadyen, then he asked for questions. Only 3 or 4 people, including me, asked questions, then we all went home.
I was expecting a fair crowd from the fishing/supply boat/leisure sectors, and a bit of lively debate, but it was all a bit of a damp squib in reality.
There weren't any anti feelings that I detected at all.
There was one other sailing chap who keeps his boat on the west coast asked a couple of questions, and a couple of oil industry guys did likewise, but they were all sort of general questions regarding the changeover. I got the feeling that the people that did speak were mostly asking about the detail of the changes, and not asking "why change? type questions.
BLESSED ARE THOSE WHO ARE CRACKED,
FOR THEY ARE THE ONES WHO LET IN THE LIGHT
Everyone knows the answer to "why change" - it's to save costs & the decision is already made. The problem is will it impact on their ability to save lives?
I was at the Port Glasgow meeting last night, didn't estimate numbers accurately, but approaching 100 folk in the hall , the meeting was far too short, it should have gone 1930 to 2200 to have a chance of folk asking their questions.
The panel on stage were -
Peter Whitbread - independent chair - seemed to do a balanced ( and difficult ) job
Bill MacFadyen - Scotland & NI MCA manager
Ian Burgess - Scotland coastal safety manager MCA
( apologies if I have misspelled names or got titles wrong)
It doesn't look good is my summary. The MCA is facing an implied budget cut requirement in the current circumstances.The implication is ( it was never stated baldly) they need to cut both staff and buildings costs where possible.
I specifically asked in my question why the current CG stations couldn't be retained with an upgraded IT system to allow all the current stations to share workload. Bill said they had to cut staff costs, I responded I wasn't suggesting he couldn't reduce staff. But my questioning wasn't going anywhere with somewhat stock responses from Bill ( a feature of the evening) - I wanted to ask if my proposal had been considered at all in the planning stages , but wasn't given the chance.
Other questions in the hall where around why Aberdeen was chosen over Clyde? ( it seems a fairly valid argument can be made that clyde is busiest in scotland). The response to this was Aberdeen has a large enough building, with fixed costs of other MCA ops - inspection etc - and is leased until 2020!
How is the new system going to improve safety? The response to this was that there would be a bigger more flexible group of 24 hour staff at the 2 new centres who could pool resources as needed to deal with situations as they arose. It was also stated that the volunteer CG rescue service will have its full time staff beefed up by appx 50% ( 60 odd to 90 odd IIRC) this may be some attempt to maintain local knowledge.
We were encouraged to use the consultation process to make our thoughts known in print. Bill did also say it was a consultation process and nothing is finalised, BUT:
Reading the MCA flyer handed out - "DSC is the required method of alerting to a distress situation" that's a direct quote - my italics, Blll alluded to it when the 16 listening watch was questioned ( quite how a loudspeaker watch will work when you have 100 people monitoring UK north and UK south beats me, I didn't get to question it.
It seems to me that the 2 main centres are going to rely much more on DSC for distress calling and location, the fact that many leisure sailors aren't DSC equiped ( a questioner quoted 40%) and that most kids on lilos or jetski users will not have DSC handsets was another point I wanted to raise.
My final thought is - the leisure boating industry contributes to a spike in the workload of the CG at weekends in summer - yet I am not sure we pay anything directly ( comercial shipping I assume pay some shipping based fees and taxes -lights, harbour dues etc) should we be proposing some fee ( per marina berth or mooring ) to make up the few million per annum they need ?
I do encourage people to go to the meetings and get club commodores, marina managers etc to go along too, Bill left last night with no doubt about how the people in the hall felt, I think we should do everything in our power to shake the MCA mangement's confidence in their plans.
Sorry some of the above is a mix of fact and opinion, and I haven't covered all that happened, I do hope some of the press were there.
