Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what plans he has to review the location and number of HM Coastguard (a) employees and (b) search and rescue helicopters serving the Firth of Forth and south-east Scotland.

The Maritime and Coastguard Agency continually monitors the services that Her Majesty’s Coastguard provides around the whole of the United Kingdom.

As a result, there are currently no plans to specifically review the number or the location of Coastguard employees across its whole UK operation.

Coastguards on the national network do not operate with fixed geographic boundaries and are able to coordinate any incident around the UK Coast, irrespective of their physical location. Workload is balanced across the whole network rather than on a centre by centre basis and incidents managed locally, supported by the whole network when required.

The current contract for the UK’s search and rescue (SAR) helicopter service will operate until 2023-2024. As part of the contract renewal process, an assurance review of the existing SAR helicopter service will be undertaken independently, which will feed in to the tender for the next contract.