The Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA) announced today that 12 foreign flagged ships were under detention in UK ports during March 2012 after failing Port State Control (PSC) inspection.

Latest monthly figures show that there were two new detentions of foreign flagged ships in UK ports during April 2012 and ten vessels remained under detention from previous months. The overall rate of detentions compared with inspections carried out over the last twelve months was 3.31% this is slightly up from Marchs twelve month rate.

Out of the detained vessels four were registered with a flag state listed on the Paris MOU white list, six were registered with a flag state on the grey list none were registered with a flag state on the black list and two were unregistered.

1.In response to one of the recommendations of Lord Donaldsons Inquiry into the prevention of pollution from merchant shipping and in compliance with the EU Directive on Port State Control (2009/16/EC as amended), the Maritime and Coastguard agency (MCA) publishes full details of the foreign flagged vessels detained in UK ports each month.

2. Inspections of foreign flagged ships in UK ports are undertaken by surveyors from the Maritime and Coastguard Agency. Where a ship is found to be deficient or lacks the required documentation, Maritime and Coastguard Agency surveyors can take a range of actions leading to detention in serious cases. The UK is part of a regional agreement on port state control known as the Paris Memorandum of Understanding on Port State Control (Paris MOU) and information on all ships that are inspected is held centrally in an electronic database known as Thetis. This allows the ships of flags with poor detention records to be targeted for future inspection.

3. Detained ships have to satisfy surveyors that remedial work has been carried out before they are allowed to leave port.

4. When applicable the list includes those passenger craft prevented from operating under the provisions of the EU Directive on Mandatory Surveys for the safe operation of regular Ro-Ro ferry and high speed passenger craft services (1999/35/EU).