Asked by: Sarah Wollaston (Liberal Democrat - Totnes)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what the average time taken was from when a call was received for the coastguard service to when that call was actioned in each of the last five years.
Answered by John Hayes
The reported time of an incident to Her Majesty’s Coastguard is the time a 999 call is received. Whilst HM Coastguard specifically records the reported time of an incident it does not specifically record an actioned time when that action does not involve the tasking of a search and rescue resource, such as when Coastguards are gathering information.
Information may be held within the text narrative of an incident record but this would require a check of tens of thousands of records over the last five years at disproportionate cost to the taxpayer.
Asked by: Sarah Wollaston (Liberal Democrat - Totnes)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, whether the reported time of an incident to the coastguard service is the time a 999 call is received or the time that incident is raised on the computer.
Answered by John Hayes
The reported time of an incident to Her Majesty’s Coastguard is the time a 999 call is received. Whilst HM Coastguard specifically records the reported time of an incident it does not specifically record an actioned time when that action does not involve the tasking of a search and rescue resource, such as when Coastguards are gathering information.
Information may be held within the text narrative of an incident record but this would require a check of tens of thousands of records over the last five years at disproportionate cost to the taxpayer.
Asked by: Sarah Wollaston (Liberal Democrat - Totnes)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, how many vacant posts at each grade there are at the National Maritime Operations Centre in Fareham.
Answered by John Hayes
The current vacancies at the National Maritime Operations Centre in Fareham are as follows:
Asked by: Sarah Wollaston (Liberal Democrat - Totnes)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, how many times in the last two years the Northern Maritime Operations Centre in Fareham has had staffing levels below what is considered safe.
Answered by John Hayes
The operational concepts and procedures that underpin Her Majesty’s Coastguard’s national network mean that the Coastguard Centres within it no longer have fixed geographic boundaries. This enables Coastguards at either the National Maritime Operations Centre (NMOC) or any of the 9 Coastguard Operations Centres (CGOC) to coordinate any incident anywhere around the UK coast irrespective of their location. As a result workload is now managed on a national basis rather than Centre by Centre as was previously the case. National capability and Coastguard staff from any Centre are now available to provide additional support to any individual Centre within the network when it is considered necessary by senior operational managers.
Due to this inherent flexibility Her Majesty’s Coastguard sets ‘Optimum Suggested’ staffing for the network as a whole rather than for each centre. Over the last two years since the national network became operational out of a total of 1,427 watches (both day and night) the network has been staffed below ‘Optimal Suggested’ levels on 137 watches.
Asked by: Sarah Wollaston (Liberal Democrat - Totnes)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, how many times one person has been left on (a) daytime and (b) night-time watch at Falmouth Coastguard Operations Centre in the last five years.
Answered by John Hayes
The operational concepts and procedures that underpin Her Majesty’s Coastguard’s national network mean that the Coastguard Centres within it no longer have fixed geographic boundaries. This enables Coastguards at either the National Maritime Operations Centre (NMOC) or any of the 9 Coastguard Operations Centres (CGOC) to coordinate any incident anywhere around the UK coast irrespective of their location. As a result workload is now managed on a national basis rather than Centre by Centre as was previously the case. National capability and Coastguard staff from any Centre are now available to provide additional support to any individual Centre within the network when it is considered necessary by senior operational managers.
The network enables Coastguards at either the National Maritime Operations Centre or at any of the nine Coastguard Operations Centres to coordinate any incident anywhere around the UK coast. Workload is managed on a national basis enabling national capability and resource to be available to support any Coastguard Centre when it is considered necessary by senior operational managers.
The number of watches when one Coastguard Officer has been on duty at Falmouth in the last five years is as follows:
(a) Daytime – 0
(b) Night Watches – 6.5
Asked by: Sarah Wollaston (Liberal Democrat - Totnes)
Question to the Department for Transport:
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.
Answered by 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.
Asked by: Sarah Wollaston (Liberal Democrat - Totnes)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, how many fully-qualified coastguard staff were on (a) daytime and (b) nighttime duty at Falmouth Coastguard operations centre on (a) 2 May and (b) 9 July 2015.
Answered by John Hayes
The number of fully qualified Coastguard staff on duty at Falmouth, within Her Majesty’s Coastguard’s national network, was as follows:
(a) 2 May 2015
(a) Day Watch - 4 (Total staffing for the national network – 25)
(b) Night Watch – 2 (Total staffing for the national network – 19)
(b) 9 July 2015
(a) Day Watch – 2 (Total staffing for the national network – 37)
(b) Night Watch – 3 (Total staffing for the national network – 25)
The operational concepts and procedures that underpin HM Coastguard’s national network mean that the Coastguard Centres within it no longer have fixed geographic boundaries. This enables Coastguards at either the National Maritime Operations Centre (NMOC) or any of the 9 Coastguard Operations Centres (CGOC) to coordinate any incident anywhere around the UK coast irrespective of their location. As a result workload is now managed on a national basis rather than Centre by Centre as was previously the case. National capability and Coastguard staff from any Centre are now available to provide additional support to any individual Centre within the network when it is considered necessary by senior operational managers.
Asked by: Sarah Wollaston (Liberal Democrat - Totnes)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, how many vacant posts at each grade there are at Falmouth Coastguard operations centre.
Answered by John Hayes
There are no vacancies at any grade at the Coastguard Operations Centre in Falmouth at present.
Asked by: Sarah Wollaston (Liberal Democrat - Totnes)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, how many times in the last two years Falmouth Coastguard Operations Centre has had staffing levels below what is considered safe.
Answered by John Hayes
The operational concepts and procedures that underpin Her Majesty’s Coastguard’s national network mean that the Coastguard Centres within it no longer have fixed geographic boundaries. This enables Coastguards at either the National Maritime Operations Centre (NMOC) or any of the 9 Coastguard Operations Centres (CGOC) to coordinate any incident anywhere around the UK coast irrespective of their location. As a result workload is now managed on a national basis rather than Centre by Centre as was previously the case. National capability and Coastguard staff from any Centre are now available to provide additional support to any individual Centre within the network when it is considered necessary by senior operational managers.
Due to this inherent flexibility Her Majesty’s Coastguard sets ‘Optimum Suggested’ staffing for the network as a whole rather than for each centre. Over the last two years since the national network became operational out of a total of 1,427 watches (both day and night) the network has been staffed below ‘Optimal Suggested’ levels on 137 watches.
Asked by: Sarah Wollaston (Liberal Democrat - Totnes)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, whether staff at the National Maritime Operations Centre in Fareham are required to record a reason for not calling on a lifeboat or coastguard team or another resource.
Answered by John Hayes
Her Majesty’s Coastguard staff at the National Maritime Operations Centre and Coastguard Operations Centres around the United Kingdom are encouraged to record the rationale for decisions taken for operational reasons during the coordination of maritime search and rescue incidents.