Reports & recommendations

Owners and operators should discuss all these questions with representatives of officers and crews before they are included in contracts and they should embark on an education and training programme for all employees in order to ensure that they understand the policy, the mechanics of the testing procedures and the consequences of failing to comply with it.

The statutory requirements in the Merchant Shipping (Safe Manning, Hours of Work and Watchkeeping) Regulations 1997 should be adopted by owners of Class V passenger vessels as guidelines. They should also note the requirements of STCW95, Section A-VIII/1 regarding fitness for duty.

The Department should give further consideration to the imposition of a general duty upon anyone who conducts an undertaking to ensure, as far as reasonably practicable, that the conduct of the undertaking does not expose other persons to risk to their health and safety.

We wholeheartedly support this initiative by the Department to carry out an FSA to cover every aspect of the safety of Class V passenger vessels including their encounter risk with large ships and bridges, fire risk, stability, subdivision, freeboard, visibility, life-saving appliances, means of escape, manning, passenger numbers, trading areas and safety management. We recommend that, in the course of what we understand will be a wide-ranging review, the FSA should include an extensive analysis of life-saving appliances and means of escape in the light of the concerns expressed in this inquiry. We also recommend that the MCA should afford the highest priority to conducting the FSA on the older vessels.

We recommend that the PLA or other responsible body review the syllabus and course content leading to licensing of watermen and lightermen to ensure that they are aware of any special problems affecting safe navigation on the river. We also recommend that all training requirements be kept under continuous review to reflect changing circumstances and conditions.

We recommend that all owners and operators of Class V passenger vessels should consider the training requirements for their crews, particularly in relation to emergency training and that consideration be given to extending the ‘Crowd Management and Passenger Safety’ training requirements in STCW95, Section A-V/2 to all persons working on Class V vessels, not only on the Thames but also nationally.

We remind shipowners and operators of the importance of the keeping of accurate contemporaneous records and of the importance of ensuring that their standing orders include instructions to that effect and that such instructions should be monitored closely.

In the light of the contents of MGN 40 (M) and of the terms of regulation 8(1) of the Merchant Shipping (International Safety Management (ISM) Code) Regulations 1998, we recommend that the MCA give consideration to the question whether or not it is intended to be permissible to designate more than one person as ‘the designated person’ and to clarify the position.

We recommend that the PLA give further consideration to byelaw 19 in the context of the collision regulations, especially rules 13 and 17, and consider whether it is appropriate to spell out the obligations of a vessel affected by byelaw 19 with absolute clarity.

Appropriate machinery should be established (as recommended in paragraph 11.58 of the final TSI report) for arriving at a decision in serious cases whether to prosecute or to hold a public inquiry (or as the case may be) and that that machinery, or at least appropriate guidelines should be published.

We recommend that the duties of the Chief Inspector of Marine Accidents to assist an FI be reviewed in order to ensure that the MAIB has a duty to assist and that, in the discharge of that duty, it has power to appoint inspectors for the purposes of the FI, with all the powers of inspectors appointed under the 1995 Act. We recommend that there be a simple change to the statute to the effect that, for the purposes of the discharge of his duty, the Chief Inspector shall have the powers of an inspector and the power to appoint an inspector and that such an inspector shall have all the powers of an inspector under section 259 of the 1995 Act. In the meantime I recommend that the Secretary of State make an appropriate determination under section 267(7) of the 1995 Act.

We recommend that the Department, in conjunction with the industry, consider what is meant by censure, whether the penalty of censure should continue to exist and, if so, why. If (contrary to our present view) it is decided that it should continue to exist, we recommend that consideration be given to requiring that the censure be endorsed on the officer’s certificate.

Finally we recommend that consideration be given to whether it is appropriate to censure persons or entities other than certificated officers and, if so why, what the test should be and whether (as we think) it would be necessary to amend the 1995 Act in order to confer a power to censure.