LONDON, April 20, 2010 /PRNewswire/ — Lloyd’s List – the leading news and information service for the global shipping industry – has learned that the UK Department for Transport is allowing Dover ferry operators to carry passengers in numbers that would normally be illegal under rules against overloading, in a bid to repatriate travellers stranded by the aviation crisis.
French authorities are understood to have made similar provisions for French concerns.
SeaFrance confirmed that it had taken advantage of the one-off bilateral derogation, which expires at the end of the week, although P&O Ferries said yesterday that it would not do so, largely because of constraints on the availability of seafarers with the right skills in the off-peak period.
“The UK move suspends whole chunks of the Safety of Life at Sea Convention, introduced after the Titanic disaster of 1912, so that vessels can take 10% more people than the maximum shown on the passenger certificate,” says David Osler, reporter for Lloyd’s List.
“Ratios enforcing the provision of lifeboats for 30% of those on board and additional liferafts for 25% of those on board have also been lifted for the time being. Both moves are unprecedented, at least in recent times,” continued Osler.
But a spokesman for the Maritime and Coastguard Agency denied that the radical step put the public at risk, despite the huge annual death toll from overloaded ferries in the third world.
Under the deal, all voyages must be completed in daylight and in favourable weather and must take on additional crew if needed for passenger control, he stressed. Moreover, modern vessels typically have lifeboat capacity above the permissible minimum.
The decision was made necessary by last week’s eruption of a volcano in Iceland, forcing the cancellation of the vast majority of airline flights across Europe because it is unsafe to allow jet engines to take in the resultant dust.
Tens of thousands of Britons from all over the world have made their way to France to use ferry services to get home, with operators reporting summer peak levels of demand.
In legal terms, the MCA, acting in the name of transport secretary Lord Adonis, has invoked powers under s.294 of the Merchant Shipping Act 1995 to exempt UK flag vessels operating from Dover, and within 20 miles of a coast, from two sets of requirements.
The first is regulation 23 of the Merchant Shipping (Survey and Certification) Regulations 1995, which prohibits a vessel sailing with more passengers than stated on its passenger certificate.
The second is regulations 9, 43, 64 and 74 of the Merchant Shipping (Life-Saving Appliances for Ships Other Than Ships of Classes III to VI(A)) Regulations 1999. These lay down specifications for the ratio of lifesaving equipment to numbers on board, and the total time for evacuations.
A number of caveats are made, but essentially the exemption has been designed to make it as easy as possible for ferries to carry as many passengers as is viable.
All this is possible under a get-out clause in chapter III of Solas, which states: “[An] administration may, if it considers that the sheltered nature and conditions of the voyage are such as to render the application of any specific requirements of this chapter unreasonable or unnecessary, exempt from those requirements individual ships or classes of ships which, in the course of their voyage, do not proceed more than 20 miles from the nearest land.”
Philip Roche, a partner at law firm Norton Rose, was in no doubt that the dispensation was allowable in international law. “It is not unsafe, I would say, so long as it is limited to this one particular route for the time it is needed,” he said.
However, a P&O source commented: “This might be very relevant for some operators. But we have got no scope to go beyond the certification we have already got, for all sorts of practical reasons, especially the level of crewing on the ships at this time of year. We need people with the right qualifications and experience to make it work, and we have gone as far as we can.”
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