This week, I wrote to Maritime and Coastguard Agency Minister Mike Penning to ask him to think again about the proposals for the Coastguard service, currently under consultation.
The plans replace our current 18 Maritime Rescue Coordination Centres (MRCCs) with two supercentres (MOCs) at Aberdeen and Solent, another for Dover alone, and five, daylight only subcentres .
With professional coastguard officers moved to the MOCs, Portland will be left with volunteer rescue crews and the SAR helicopter, to be alerted when emergencies arise.
And every emergency in the country will be filtered through what are essentially two call centres, staffed by those with little or no local knowledge.
Inevitably, valuable time will be wasted.
How is a call handler tens or even hundreds of miles away to know exactly which cove or cliff or tidal race a mayday call refers to?
Computerised maps are not good enough. Cynics call it ‘rescue by Google’
I believe there is an over reliance here on modern technology – which we all know is subject to breakdown, extreme weather and even sun spots.
We are supposed to trust that if one MOC goes down, the other can take over search and rescue operations for the entire country. The way I see it, if one goes down, we have lost 50 per cent of our capacity.
In contrast, if one of our 18 MRCCs is knocked out, that represents a loss of only 5% of our total resources, although I accept they are not properly linked up.
The obvious solution is to network all our existing MRCCs, so that they can cooperate or act alone as needed. But this, we are told, is too expensive.
But an unworkable plan is expensive too. It cost the taxpayer over £420 million when a similar Fire and Rescue Service scheme for nine centralised call centres was scrapped last year.
The MCA says these proposals will ensure a more ‘resilient, effective and efficient’ Coastguard service .
I don’t agree. I believe we will wreck a valuable and irreplaceable national treasure.
These proposals need to be rethought.
Those wishing to make their views known to the Government should write to the Maritime and Coastguard Agency, which is conducting a public consultation exercise until 24th March 2011, at the following link:
http://www.mcga.gov.uk/c4mca/mcga07-home/shipsandcargoes/consultations/….