This consultation seeks your views on a new Statutory Instrument (SI) and accompanying code, The Safety of Small Workboats and Pilot Boats — A Code of Practice (“Workboat Code Edition 3”), which will provide a domestic legal underpinning for Workboats and Pilot Boats to operate on a commercial basis.

The Merchant Shipping (Small Workboats and Pilot Boats) Regulations 2023 and accompanying Code of Practice applies to workboats, including remotely operated unmanned vessels operating as workboats, and pilot boats which are less than 24m load line length.

This instrument updates the provisions previously made in the 1998 Regulations so that they set out in greater detail the application and certification process for vessels, the requirements on owners and masters to report incidents, the processes to be followed where a vessel is deficient or detained and the penalties that can arise if the Regulations are breached. The instrument also sets out the process that applies if a surveyor determines that a vessel is deficient to the extent that it does not correspond with the particulars under which it was certified or if it poses a danger to the vessels or a person on board. In addition, the instrument provides for disputes in relation to survey outcomes to be settled by arbitration.

The instrument also makes consequential amendments to other instruments which are needed to enable the provisions to apply to remotely operated unmanned vessels used as workboats.

Contact email: codes@mcga.gov.uk

This revokes and replaces the Merchant Shipping (Small Workboats and Pilot Boats) Regulations 1998.

This consultation closes at 11:45pm on 29 December 2022