Régistration procedures in the UK
13.
They
Apart from the above considerations concerning access
to the Register, and the application of safety standards,
there is a strong case for modernising the operation of the
Register. The manual procedures for the registration of
ships, as set out in considerable detail in the 1894 Act,
are antiquated, and increasingly expensive to operate.
involve a good deal of duplication, since registration is
carried out by Customs and Excise officers at the ports of
registry and that a General Register is maintained separately
at the Department's offices at Cardiff based on manuscript
returns from the various ports. Such cumbersome methods
are difficult to justify in modern times. The Rochdale
Committee considered the problem and recommended that the
work of registration should be centralised within the
Department, (as is the case in many leading maritime countries).
The Government believes that centralisation of the registry
function particularly if it is computer-based, will lead to
cost savings, greater speed and efficiency, and ready access
to information on the British fleet, which is difficult to
retrieve manually. However these changes cannot be brought
about without amending the 1894 Act. This is considered in
Part IV
Results of previous consultations
14.
The various aspects of the present system which
require modification have been discussed in the preceding
paragraphs. Most of the respondents to the Consultative
document of 1981 expressed the view that the basic principles
1...