Large Dunkirk Little Ships under threat
Concerns have been raised that some of the commercially operated Dunkirk Little Ships could be scrapped as a result of new regulations.
The Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA) is reviewing the technical requirements of UK domestic passenger vessels to bring them in line with modern safety standards.
Apart from new liferaft and lifejacket provision, mandatory fire and bilge alarms and powered pumps for firefighting, requirements are also proposed for all vessels to survive relatively minor damage. To achieve this, boats must meet either the one compartment damage stability standard through the heel test or meet the buoyancy test standard by having a watertight deck. For some of the Dunkirk Little Ships currently still in service as commercial vessels, this would mean raising the height of the decking to minimise flood risk. Critics believe this would be cost prohibitive and ruin the character of the boats.
Jason Carley of the Association of Dunkirk Little Ships said there are currently around 120 active Dunkirk Little Ships and the proposed regulations would affect between five and ten boats.
He said some of the new rules are “effectively impossible” to implement on some of the older, larger Dunkirk Little Ships.
“If rules are brought in and applied to vessels then they will no longer be able to operate commercially. If they are not used, then almost certainly these boats will sit idle and typically die in a boatyard somewhere.”
He said the association was very concerned about the “blanket application of some of the rules to historic vessels”, and urged the MCA to “apply any rules proportionally”.
In a statement to PBO, the MCA said the primary intention of the proposals was to ‘increase safety standards across the domestic passenger ship fleet’. A consultation took place between November 2018 and late January 2019 and the 75 responses are currently being analysed.
The MCA said it had identified only four Dunkirk Little Ships which would be potentially affected, adding that exemption requests could be made, which would be looked at on ‘a case by case basis’.