Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, how many fully-qualified coastguard staff were on (a) daytime and (b) nighttime duty at Falmouth Coastguard operations centre on (a) 2 May and (b) 9 July 2015.

The number of fully qualified Coastguard staff on duty at Falmouth, within Her Majesty’s Coastguard’s national network, was as follows:

(a) 2 May 2015

(a) Day Watch - 4 (Total staffing for the national network – 25)

(b) Night Watch – 2 (Total staffing for the national network – 19)

(b) 9 July 2015

(a) Day Watch – 2 (Total staffing for the national network – 37)

(b) Night Watch – 3 (Total staffing for the national network – 25)

The operational concepts and procedures that underpin HM Coastguard’s national network mean that the Coastguard Centres within it no longer have fixed geographic boundaries. This enables Coastguards at either the National Maritime Operations Centre (NMOC) or any of the 9 Coastguard Operations Centres (CGOC) to coordinate any incident anywhere around the UK coast irrespective of their location. As a result workload is now managed on a national basis rather than Centre by Centre as was previously the case. National capability and Coastguard staff from any Centre are now available to provide additional support to any individual Centre within the network when it is considered necessary by senior operational managers.