Merchant Shipping Act, 1992

Safety of pleasure craft and their occupants.

20.—(1) The Minister may by regulations make such provision as he considers necessary or expedient for the purpose of ensuring the safety of pleasure craft and their occupants.

(2) Without prejudice to the generality of subsection (1), regulations under subsection (1) may—

(a) require pleasure craft or specified classes of pleasure craft to comply with specified standards of seaworthiness (including stability),

(b) require pleasure craft or specified classes of pleasure craft to comply with specified standards of construction and maintenance,

(c) require pleasure craft or specified classes of pleasure craft to carry specified life-saving, fire-fighting, radio and navigation equipment, and

(d) make provision for periodic survey of specified classes of pleasure craft and their appliances and equipment and the prohibition of the use of specified classes of pleasure craft that have not been surveyed in accordance with regulations or that, following such a survey, are declared by the person who carried it out to be unsafe for use and for appeals against such declarations or against other findings of such surveys.

(3) Regulations under this section may make provision for such consequential, incidental, ancillary and supplementary matters (including the enforcement of the regulations and, with the consent of the Minister for Finance, the charging of fees by the Minister) as the Minister considers necessary or expedient.

(4) Different provision may be made in regulations under this section for different classes of pleasure craft.

(5) If in respect of a pleasure craft there is a contravention of a regulation under this section, the owner and (if the craft is in use) the master of the craft shall each be guilty of an offence and shall each be liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding £1,000 or to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 6 months or to both.

(6) In this section “pleasure craft” means vessels used otherwise than for profit and used wholly or mainly for sport or recreation but includes mechanically propelled vessels that are on hire pursuant to contracts or other arrangements that do not require the owners of the vessels to provide crews or parts of crews for them.