Guidance
MCA enforcement policy statement
Information about the MCA Regulatory Compliance Investigations Team, its operational procedures and action it can take for maritime legislation offences.
Documents
Details
The Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA) is an executive agency of the Department for Transport and the statutory authority for enforcing merchant shipping legislation.
The enforcement action it can take is varied. Any sanction it carries out reflects the seriousness of the legislative breach.
This document is MCA’s policy statement and it describes:
- background to the policy
- enforcement unit and working procedures
- types of offence
- administrative sanctions for ships and individuals
Updates to this page
Published 1 May 2014
Last updated 23 April 2025
+ show all updates
-
Updated to include principles of enforcement and more detailed list of administrative sanctions.
-
Amended section 2 of the enforcement policy
-
Updated enforcement policy with new department name.
-
First published.