Memorandum by the Public and Commercial
Services Union (PCS) (SAR 08)
SEARCH AND RESCUE
INTRODUCTION
1. The Public and Commercial Services Union
(PCS) is the largest trade union both within the civil service
and the Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA). PCS has over 320,000
members with 700 employed by the MCA.
2. PCS welcomes the select committee's timely
enquiry, and is happy to supplement this brief written submission
with oral evidence or further written evidence.
3. As with many other areas of the civil
service at present, a great deal of this submission deals with
PCS's concerns over low staff levels and quality of service. The
union is concerned that the UK's search and rescue co-ordination
in the MCA suffers because of:
— External recruitment of staff into
senior positions without the relevant background and experience.
— Poor comparability of pay with other
emergency services making it more difficult to attract quality
staff.
— Increase in the lack of training
in search and rescue skills.
4. The submission attempts to cover the
questions that the Committee's inquiry is set to examine. However,
we feel unable to comment in how the UK's search and rescue arrangements
compare with those of other countries, as we do not have the sufficient
information regarding the matter. PCS believes it would be beneficial
if the practices and procedures of foreign search and rescue organisations
along with their recruitment policies were studied by the MCA
in order to ascertain whether or not the MCA is abreast of current
search and rescue thinking.
How effective are the UK's search and rescue co-ordination
arrangements?
5. PCS believes that if effectiveness is
measured by the time a Coastguard gets on scene within the 30
minutes criteria, the MCA is effective. However, if you measure
the time it takes to get a team on scene that can actually carry
out work efficiently then the MCA is not effective. This is largely
due to a shortage of available auxiliary coastguards in any given
area, the working time regulations, and the reluctance of employers
to release staff for these voluntary duties. It is now the norm
to alert numerous teams of auxiliaries, which in turn delays the
time to arrive on scene to render assistance.
6. Because of the difficulties in alerting
auxiliary teams it makes life in the operations rooms very stressful
due to the increased workload in calling out the additional teams
to assist in rescues.
7. Also PCS is concerned that within the
operations rooms there appears to be a lack of experienced and
qualified staff on duty. This problem is also compounded by the
external recruitment of District Operations Managers (DOM) and
senior grades above DOMs. PCS believe these positions are an essential
part of the operational chain of command and should be a source
of expertise able to answer complicated questions regarding maritime
search and rescue. However, by recruiting external candidates
at this level it weakens the whole operational structure as these
persons do not hold relevant search and rescue qualifications
and therefore do not have the confidence of the staff who may
have to rely on their decisions.
8. In the past coastguards were recruited
from a pool of candidates that had a maritime background or experience
of co-ordinating search and rescue. Because of the decline in
the merchant navy and military personnel with that sort of background
coupled with the low pay offered by the MCA are becoming difficult
to attract. Few people with those skills would apply to the MCA
to become a coastguard as they can obtain better paid jobs elsewhere
and as recognised in an MCA pay comparability exercise, for the
skills knowledge and expertise required to do the job, Coastguards
are seriously underpaid compared to similar occupations in outside
industry or other emergency services.
Do search and rescue organisations receive the
resources, equipment and training they need to perform their tasks
effectively and efficiently?
9. PCS is pleased that on the coast the
equipment provided by the MCA is of good quality and fit for the
purpose. However, we do have concerns about the number of training
hours allocated to auxiliary teams. In effect the auxiliaries
are being forced to undertake unpaid training in their own time.
We do know this also concerns the MCA, as they are currently undertaking
a review to look at these and other issues.
10. In the operations rooms over the last
few years the MCA have concentrated training in skills such as
diversity and sick absence recording. While PCS appreciates the
need for such training, we believe it should not have been to
the detriment of training in search and rescue skills. For example
until recently there were no watch officer courses. Members have
perceived this as a box ticking exercise to retain "Investor
in People" status.
11. Following recent tragic incidents the
MCA has belatedly decided that all staff undertaking the duty
of search and rescue mission co-ordinator, should re-qualify under
the guise of Standards of Training, Certification and Watchkeeping
for Seafarers (STCW), a vocational qualification. However, under
this scheme, trained staff using their skills do not have to re-qualify
which has been seen as an unconsidered reaction in response to
criticisms.
12. "Vision" the new incident
management system is now fitted in all coastguard stations. Operator
confidence in the system is low because of longstanding faults
and other technical problems such as system lock ups, loss of
data and messaging facilities. This is despite senior management
championing the system and forging ahead with station pairing
regardless of the inherent risks associated with this strategy.
Whilst coastguards realise the potential of the system it is frustrating
to operate it in its present state.
13. PCS has been made aware there are plans
in place to downgrade Forth Coastguard Station. Equipment is being
removed and control will be passed to Aberdeen Coastguard Station,
this work is due to commence on 21 February 2005 and with a go
live date of 21 March 2005. The union is aggrieved that we have
not been consulted on this or on a range of other matters, for
example implementing risk assessment training for operations room
staff.
14. Whilst the MCA has gone some way to
curbing the military style of management there are still occasions
where senior managers make threats to junior staff. For example,
recently a very senior manager inadvertently sent out an email
to multiple addresses in which he stated that he was threatening
his sector managers with down marking their performance to unsatisfactory
if they did not meet their targets of fishing vessel inspections.
This is despite the fact the there is an agreement between the
MCA and PCS that fishing vessel inspections were an additional
duty and would be carried out only when coastguard work permitted.
There was no mention that any targets would be imposed and we
certainly have not been consulted on this.
How does the voluntary nature of some of the search
and rescue organisations affect the objectives and targets, which
are fixed for departments and agencies with search and rescue
responsibilities and their abilities to meet those targets?
15. The voluntary nature of maritime search
and rescue does have an effect in so far as the MCA does not have
control over its volunteer assets without operational usage. The
other side to this is that without volunteer assets the MCA could
not carry out its primary search and rescue function. As we stated
earlier it does have an enormous effect on the workload in the
operations rooms in trying to juggle sufficient resources to deal
with maritime and/or coastal incidents.
How dependant is the UK on voluntary organisations
for the provision of Search and Rescue services?
16. The MCA is almost totally reliant on
voluntary organisations to carry out their prime search and rescue
functions. These include auxiliary coastguards, mountain rescue
and the Royal National Lifeboat Institute (RNLI).
What improvements could be made to the UK's search
and rescue arrangements?
17. PCS believes one of the main improvements
the MCA could make would be to ensure that operations rooms are
staffed with sufficient fully qualified staff appropriate to their
grade.
18. PCS also believes that it would be advantageous
if all operational senior coastguard management had relevant qualifications
and experience in maritime search and rescue, this would help
to build confidence within the agency and maintain the professionalism
of the service. In the past the MCA would only recruit those who
have a seafaring background, knowledge of search and rescue or
any other relevant skill beneficial to the coastguard. Some years
ago the MCA carried out a recruitment review and one of the main
recommendations was that seagoing experience was a necessary skill
required in operations rooms. It was agreed that those staff recruited
into the coastguard without any seagoing experience should be
allowed to gain this experience before qualifying. It appears
that this scheme has fallen into disuse.
19. PCS has ascertained that in Eastern
and SCOTNI regions there are a number of vacancies—one Coastguard
Watch Assistants (CWA), 21 Watch Officers (WO) and one Watch Manager.
However, in addition there are 14 CWA and seven WO probationers/trainees.
PCS believe that probationers/trainees should be supernumerary
to the watch complement until they are qualified.
20. In 1997 the recruitment strategy of
the MCA for coastguard grades was that there would be three new
entry CWA courses and two WO courses held annually at the MCA
training centre. This has not happened, as the training centre
does not have any WO courses programmed for this year. So in effect
the MCA is unable to recruit and train direct entry WO's and this
is why the number of WO's vacancies are so high leading to a skills
decline in the operations rooms. PCS believe that line management
and human resources should control the recruitment of suitable
staff, and not a training centre whose main job is to train and
examine staff.
21. PCS is concerned that attempts are being
made to reduce staffing levels without first ensuring that the
staff on watch are fully qualified for their substantive grade.
In December 2004 at Yarmouth Coastguard Station staffing levels
were down to one WO (deputising as Watch Manager) and one CWA
under training. The minimum staffing levels should have been one
Watch Manager, one WO and one CWA. As a result there could have
been health and safety implications if one or the other had taken
ill. PCS's main concern however, was the level of service that
may have been available to persons in distress. We have evidence
that this is not an isolated case and in fact is becoming an increasingly
common occurrence.
January 2005
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