Select Committee on Public Accounts Minutes of Evidence




APPENDIX 3

Supplementary memorandum submitted by Maurice Storey, Maritime & Coastguard Agency (PAC 00-01/183)

  I appeared before the Committee on 2 April and provided specifically requested information on 18 April. Since then it has become clear to me that the information I gave the Committee with regard to under 12 metre Fishing Vessel Inspections would benefit from additional clarification.

  With reference to the last sentence of my response to question 15, I stated that "with the training of our Coastguard Sector Managers (which we completed in the last financial year) we will carry out a lot more inspections during the next 12 months."

  I wish to clarify my statement by giving more background information that I hope the Committee will find helpful. Over recent years, we have carried out the following number of under 12 metre Fishing Vessel Inspections.

Year

1997-8

1998-9

1999-2000

2000-01

Fishing Vessels—Under 12 metre Inspections

1,014

1,002

892

1,691

  In the last financial year 1 April 2000 to 31 March 2001 we set a target of 1,600 under 12 metre Fishing Vessel Inspections. We have accepted the NAO recommendation to use the risk-based approach in deciding resource allocations within the MCA and setting our inspection targets during this current year (2001-02). We have taken the activity risk and resource analysis provided by the NAO and placed a resource allocation against each broad survey and inspection activity in accordance with the use of the graph that the NAO produced. Having used the risk-based approach, the figure set for under 12 metre Fishing Vessel Inspections in 2001-02 is actually 1,400, which is more than previous years prior to the training of the Coastguard Sector Managers, but less than the 1,691 achieved last financial year.

  We have established recently that it was taking more hours and resource to carry out under 12 metre Fishing Vessel Inspections due to fishermen not readily presenting the vessels to our Coastguard Sector Managers. This resulted in a lot of wasted time . The resource expended is the number of hours per inspection multiplied by the number of successful inspections. We have been able to allocate more time to the inspection itself and therefore the ultimate resource allocation on under 12 metre Fishing Vessels is more this year than last year, although fewer inspections will be conducted. We will of course keep a check of resources actually expended and use the risk-based approach in future years.

  I hope that this further information is helpful to the Committee's continuing work.

Maurice Storey

Chief Executive

Maritime & Coastguard Agency

7 July 2001

 

 

 

 


 
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