Maritime and Shipping Reporting for UK Journalists

Last reviewed: 16 August 2026Next review due: 16 February 2027

What is the maritime beat?

The maritime beat is the sea-facing half of the transport story, and it behaves differently from the land-facing half. Its institutions are older, its ownership models are stranger, its employment law is territorially complicated, and a large part of it sits outside the access-to-information regime most reporters assume applies to anything with a public function. If you cover a coastal patch you are already on this beat whether or not anyone has called it that: the harbour authority, the ferry operator, the freeport board, the fishing fleet, the offshore wind supply chain and the lifeboat station are all in your circulation area.

It is a distinct beat from transport reporting, which covers rail, road, aviation and active travel and works from the Office of Rail and Road, National Highways and the Civil Aviation Authority. The maritime equivalents are the Maritime and Coastguard Agency, the Marine Accident Investigation Branch and the Marine Management Organisation, and the paperwork they generate is not the same paperwork. It also overlaps heavily with business and finance reporting, because ports are large private and quasi-private businesses, and with environmental prosecutions reporting, because marine licensing, dredging and pollution enforcement all leave public registers.

The through-line of this guide is documentary. Almost every maritime claim you will want to make can be tied to a named instrument, a published investigation report, a port constitution, a wage declaration or a vessel record — and almost every maritime claim that goes wrong in print does so because the reporter reached for a tracking website or a trade rumour instead.

Why this beat matters

1Ports are strategic infrastructure with private governance. The Department for Transport’s own guidance records that there are over 300 ports and harbours in England and Wales, and that private and trust ports are not subject to the Freedom of Information Act — a combination of national importance and limited statutory transparency that exists almost nowhere else in the economy.
2The accident record is published in full. The MAIB investigates and publishes reports on marine accidents, with a statutory objective of preventing future accidents, and its Safety Digest anonymises and circulates the incidents that never reach a named investigation.
3Seafarer employment law is being rewritten right now. The Seafarers’ Wages Act 2023, the Seafarers’ Wages Regulations 2024, the Employment Rights Act 2025 and a mandatory Seafarers’ Charter expected in December 2026 form a live legislative sequence with a named originating scandal.
4Freeports are a spending and planning story with a fixed geography. Twelve are designated across England, Scotland and Wales, each with customs and tax sites whose boundaries are published — so the beneficiaries of the policy are identifiable.
5Ships are trackable, but only partially. AIS gives a public position feed for most commercial vessels, which makes maritime one of the few beats where a reporter can observe the subject directly — provided the limits of that feed are stated honestly.
6The sanctions story runs through UK waters. The UK can specify individual ships by IMO number under the Russia sanctions regime, and had sanctioned more than 600 shadow fleet and Russian LNG vessels by June 2026, which turns coastal observation into international reporting.

The map: who regulates, who investigates, who licenses

Three bodies do most of the work, and they are constituted differently. Getting the constitutional status right is not pedantry — it tells you which questions each one can answer, and which ones it is not permitted to answer.

Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA)

GOV.UK states that "The Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA) is an executive agency of the Department for Transport (DfT)". It says the agency works "to prevent the loss of life on the coast and at sea", runs a 24-hour maritime and coastal search and rescue emergency coordination and response service for the United Kingdom, produces legislation and guidance on maritime matters, certifies seafarers, and enforces standards for ship safety, security, pollution prevention and seafarer health, safety and welfare through survey and inspection. It is also the body the Department for Transport says will be "responsible for enforcement and prosecutions" under the mandatory Seafarers’ Charter.

Marine Accident Investigation Branch (MAIB)

Described on GOV.UK as "an independent unit within the Department for Transport" — not an executive agency. Its stated job is "to help prevent further avoidable accidents from occurring, not to establish blame or liability", and it publishes reports containing recommendations on improving safety at sea. Its May 2026 information leaflet says the Branch is based in Southampton with four teams of investigators drawn from the nautical, engineering, naval architecture and fishing disciplines, and that it "does not apportion blame and it does not establish liability, enforce laws or carry out prosecutions".

Marine Management Organisation (MMO)

GOV.UK describes the MMO as "an executive non-departmental public body, sponsored by the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs" — a different department from the MCA and MAIB. It was created by the Marine and Coastal Access Act 2009, section 1(1) of which provides that "There is to be a body known as the Marine Management Organisation". It handles marine licensing, marine planning, fisheries management, marine protected areas and UK catch certificates, and it maintains a public register of marine licence applications and decisions.

Port state control and the Paris MoU

The Paris Memorandum of Understanding on Port State Control operates the inspection regime for foreign ships calling at member states’ ports. It publishes an inspection search, a current detentions list, ship risk profiles, company performance data and a current bannings list. For a story about a substandard ship calling at your port, this is the record that turns an allegation into a documented inspection history.

Two other names belong in the contact book. Lloyd's List and TradeWinds are the established maritime trade publications; both are subscription titles, and both routinely carry vessel, casualty and ownership detail long before it reaches general news. Treat them as informed trade reporting to be checked against the primary record, not as primary sources in their own right.

Reading an MAIB report

MAIB reports are among the most useful documents produced by any UK investigatory body, and among the most frequently misquoted. The statutory frame is set by the Merchant Shipping (Accident Reporting and Investigation) Regulations 2012. Regulation 5(1) provides that "The sole objective of a safety investigation into an accident under these Regulations shall be the prevention of future accidents through the ascertainment of its causes and circumstances", and regulation 5(2) that "It shall not be the purpose of such an investigation to determine liability nor, except so far as is necessary to achieve its objective, to apportion blame."

What triggers an investigation

The MAIB leaflet says accidents should be reported "by the quickest possible means" and that the Branch runs a reporting line staffed 24 hours a day. In very serious cases a safety investigation begins immediately; for other casualties a Preliminary Assessment establishes whether further investigation is warranted, a decision usually made within two weeks of the accident, with all involved parties informed. A decision not to investigate is itself a fact you can report and question.

The four questions

The leaflet states that all MAIB investigations seek answers to four basic questions: what happened, how did it happen, why did it happen, and what can be done to prevent it happening again. That structure maps directly onto the report, and tells you where in the document to look for the material you actually need.

The evidence base

Inspectors visit the vessels concerned, interview crew, passengers, shore staff and other witnesses, and collect physical and electronic evidence. Where a vessel carries a voyage data recorder the data is removed and examined at MAIB offices; where a vessel has sunk, remotely-operated vehicle surveys or divers may be contracted. Failed equipment may be independently analysed to determine the mode of failure. A report resting on VDR data is evidentially much stronger than one resting on recollection, and the report will tell you which it is.

The 30-day consultation

Each report is circulated for consultation to stakeholders and to anyone whose reputation could be affected by its contents; where a person has died it is sent to their next of kin. A 30-day consultation period allows involved parties to check the facts and analysis and put forward corrections, and the report may be amended before final publication. A published MAIB report has therefore already been through an adverse-comment process — worth knowing when an operator complains after the event.

The timetable

Regulation 14 requires the Chief Inspector to make every effort to make a report publicly available in the shortest possible time or within 12 months, and if that is not possible, to publish an interim report within 12 months of the date of the accident. An overdue report, or an interim report that has stayed interim, is a legitimate story on its own.

Recommendations and what happens to them

Reports may contain recommendations aimed at preventing similar accidents. The leaflet is explicit that "the recommendations carry no force of law", but that recipients are required to report whether they accept them and, if accepted, how they will be taken forward. Comments from recipients who have rejected or only partly accepted a recommendation are normally placed in the public domain through the Chief Inspector’s Annual Report to the Secretary of State. That annual report is where you find out which safety lessons were refused.

The other publications

Urgent safety issues are promulgated through a Safety Bulletin rather than waiting for the full report. Safety Flyers are published alongside a report to push the lessons at the relevant sectors of the marine community. The Safety Digest is published twice a year, free to all, and comprises anonymised short accounts of accidents and incidents — an under-used source of patterns that never reached a named investigation.

While an MAIB investigation, a police investigation or a coroner's inquiry is live, the usual restrictions on speculating about cause apply. See contempt and active proceedings before publishing a cause theory.

Who owns a port

The Department for Transport's Ports Good Governance Guidance, published in March 2018, is the document that settles this. It applies to statutory harbour authorities, and states that the guidance "covers all SHAs regardless of the port ownership model, that is whether this is private, a trust port, a LA owned port". Those are the three categories. The guidance is advisory: paragraph 1.7 says it "does not have force of law and is not legally binding" and does not replace duties in a port's own legislation or in general Acts such as the Harbours Act 1964 or the Companies Act 2006.

Trust ports — Port of London Authority, Dover Harbour Board

Paragraph 3.3 of the guidance: "Trust ports are independent statutory bodies, with responsibility to manage, maintain and improve a harbour. Trust ports operate on a commercial basis generally without ongoing public sector financial support but have no shareholders. Surpluses are re-invested in the harbour for the benefit of stakeholders, including harbour users, local communities and government." The PLA says on its own site: "As a trust port, the Port of London Authority has no shareholders and operates for the benefit of customers and stakeholders now and in the future." Dover Harbour Board describes itself as "an independent statutory corporation, created by the Crown to administer, maintain and improve the harbour of Dover", originally established by Royal Charter in 1606 and reconstituted by Act of Parliament in 1861, with its powers brought together in the Dover Harbour Consolidation Act 1954 and a board of nine members appointed under the Dover Harbour (Constitution) Revision Order 2016.

Local authority owned ports — Portsmouth International Port

Portsmouth International Port states on its own website that it is "Owned and operated by Portsmouth City Council". Part C of the DfT guidance deals with this model specifically, noting that an LA owned port operates "as part of a wider public sector organisation" and is unlikely to be governed by a board in the way a privately owned SHA or a trust port may be — governance may instead sit with a council committee or a cabinet member, or with a Harbour Management Committee. For reporting purposes that means the port’s decisions surface in council papers, and the councillor holding the portfolio is answerable in a way that a trust port chair is not.

Privately owned ports — Associated British Ports

ABP describes itself as "the UK’s leading and largest ports group" and lists port locations from Ayr and Troon to Southampton, Immingham, Hull and Port Talbot. Its holding company, Associated British Ports Holdings Limited, is registered at Companies House with company number 01612178, incorporated on 8 February 1982 and previously named Associated British Ports Holdings P.L.C. That is the practical difference for a reporter: a private port group leaves a Companies House trail of accounts, charges, directors and persons with significant control, while Dover Harbour Board — by its own account — "is not registered at Companies House and does not have a company number" because it is a statutory corporation rather than a company incorporated under the Companies Acts.

What every statutory harbour authority must publish anyway

The guidance records that SHAs have "a statutory obligation under the Harbours Act 1964 to produce annual accounts and reports in line with the requirements of the Companies Act 2006 and to provide these to the Secretary of State for Transport". Dover Harbour Board confirms it prepares its accounts to Companies Act 2006 requirements, files them with the Department for Transport and publishes them on its own website. The guidance also notes that section 26 of the Harbours Act 1964 gives SHAs the power to levy ship, passenger and goods dues, and that SHAs have a duty to publish standard dues tariffs. Accounts and tariffs are therefore obtainable from every port, FOI or no FOI.

Devolution and the Wales carve-out

The guidance applies to all SHAs in England, and applied in Wales only until the Wales Act 2017 devolution settlement took effect on 1 April 2018, after which it applies in Wales to reserved trust ports only. It defines reserved trust ports by reference to a turnover threshold and notes that Milford Haven Port Authority was expected to be the only such port when the provisions came into force. Scotland and Northern Ireland have their own arrangements and their own guidance; do not apply this DfT document across the border without checking.

Freeports

There are twelve UK freeports. The government's freeports site lists eight in England — Freeport East, East Midlands Freeport, Humber Freeport, Liverpool City Region Freeport, Plymouth and South Devon Freeport, Solent Freeport, Teesside Freeport and Thames Freeport — two green freeports in Scotland, Forth Green Freeport and Inverness and Cromarty Firth Green Freeport, and two in Wales, Anglesey Freeport and Celtic Freeport.

The Freeports Handbook, last updated on 1 June 2026, records the sequence: the eight English freeports were announced in March 2021, the two Scottish green freeports in January 2023, and the two Welsh freeports in March 2023. It states that freeports across the UK "are intended to: create economic regeneration and jobs, be national hubs for global trade and investment, be hotbeds for innovation", and describes a customs site, also called a free zone, as "a designated customs area in which an authorised business can import and then store, or process, duty suspended goods".

A freeport is a set of designated sites, not a place. The outer boundary, the customs sites and the tax sites are separate designations, and the reliefs attach to specific sites rather than to the whole area. GOV.UK publishes maps of UK freeports; check them before writing that a company is "in the freeport".
The governance body is not the port. Each freeport has its own delivery and governance structure, typically involving local authorities, the port operator and private partners. Establish who signs off spending and who is accountable for the jobs numbers before quoting either.
Jobs and investment figures are projections until they are audited. Freeport announcements are made in the language of expected investment and expected jobs. Ask for the baseline, the counting method and the date at which the count will be verified, and keep the original announcement so you can check it later.
Displacement is the standing counter-argument. The persistent critique of freeport policy is that activity moves from elsewhere in the UK rather than being created. Any story quoting a gross jobs figure should say whether a net figure exists.
Tax and customs rules change. The Freeports Handbook is updated — the version cited here carries a last-updated date of 1 June 2026. Do not carry forward a relief window or a rule from an older article without re-reading the current guidance.

Seafarer employment: P&O Ferries and what changed

The Department for Transport's factsheet on the mandatory Seafarers' Charter states that the voluntary Charter launched in 2023 "was part of the response to P&O Ferries sacking almost 800 seafarers in March 2022 and replacing them with agency workers on worse terms and conditions". That sentence, in a government document, is the safest available anchor for the episode. The mass dismissal took place on 17 March 2022, and the company's chief executive gave evidence to Commons select committees about it. Several separate strands of investigation and enforcement followed, on different timescales, so check the current status of any specific proceedings before describing them — and keep criminal and civil routes distinct in the copy.

Seafarers’ Wages Act 2023

The DfT factsheet describes the Act as making "payment of an equivalent to the UK National Minimum Wage for work in UK waters a condition of access to ports for services calling at a UK port at least 120 times a year". The mechanism runs through harbour authorities: operators are asked for a declaration; failure to provide one triggers a surcharge; an unpaid surcharge means refusal of harbour access. Section 20 extends the Act to England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, and provides that the regulation-making powers together with sections 1, 2 and 16 to 20 came into force on the day the Act was passed, with the remaining provisions commenced by regulations.

The regulations that made it operational

The Seafarers’ Wages Regulations 2024 provide that they "may be cited as the Seafarers’ Wages Regulations 2024 and come into force on 1st December 2024". They were amended by the Seafarers’ Wages (Amendment) Regulations 2025, which came into force on 1 April 2025. If a story turns on whether an operator was in scope on a given date, those two dates matter — not the date of Royal Assent of the Act.

Employment Rights Act 2025

Section 56 provides simply that "Schedule 5 amends the Seafarers’ Wages Act 2023". Legislation.gov.uk carries the annotation that section 56 was "not in force at Royal Assent". The DfT factsheet explains the intended effect: the 2023 Act "will become the Seafarers’ (Wages and Working Conditions) Act 2023", and the Act "provides powers to make regulations setting standards relating to safety (including roster patterns, fatigue management and safety related training) and remuneration (including pay outside of UK waters)". The same Act also contains collective redundancy provisions, including one on collective redundancy notifications for ships’ crew.

The mandatory Seafarers’ Charter

The DfT factsheet says the Employment Rights Act "gives the government powers to implement a Mandatory Seafarers Charter", creating "a statutory framework for a Mandatory Seafarers Charter, ensuring that minimum employment standards – such as fair pay, working conditions, and employment rights – apply to seafarers working on vessels regularly operating in UK waters", and that "Commencement of the Mandatory Seafarers Charter is expected to be in December 2026". Regulations will specify the services in scope by route and/or frequency of port calls, "but no less frequently than 120 port calls a year".

Who enforces it, and who does not

The factsheet is explicit that "ports will not play a criminal enforcement role" and that harbour authorities "will not be responsible for checking the validity of declarations" — their role is to make port access conditional on a declaration or a surcharge. The Maritime and Coastguard Agency "will be the body responsible for enforcement and prosecutions". Aim the enforcement question at the MCA and the administrative question at the harbour authority.

The consultation now running the detail

The DfT consultation "Strengthening seafarer protections on UK-France routes" ran from 5 June 2026 to 17 July 2026 and, in its own words, "Sets out proposals for new regulations under the Seafarers’ (Wages and Working Conditions) Act to strengthen pay and safe working protections on international services calling at UK ports", covering requirements on pay across the whole journey, limits on periods of service and rest, and new declaration and enforcement arrangements. The consultation response and the resulting regulations are the next documents to diarise.

The voluntary Charter and who has signed it

The GOV.UK announcement of 5 June 2026 describes the Charter as setting "higher standards for seafarer welfare, working conditions and pay beyond existing legal requirements, including on social welfare provision, fairer contracts, quality training and professional development". It records that DFDS, Brittany Ferries and Stena Line have achieved Seafarers’ Charter Status on their services between the UK and France and the Channel Islands, while P&O Ferries had provided evidence of compliance with all of the requirements except one aspect of social welfare provision. Charter status is a checkable, named fact about a named operator — a good spine for a local ferry story.

The unions and the international floor

The RMT describes itself as "Britain's largest specialist transport trade union", with "more than 83,000 members from almost every sector of the transport industry - from the mainline and underground railways, shipping and offshore, buses and road freight", and says it negotiates with over 150 transport-sector companies. Nautilus International describes itself as "the global maritime union" and as "an independent, influential global trade union and professional association", organised across the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Switzerland, with members who move people and goods at sea and who work ashore as harbour masters, port towage staff, marine pilots and VTS operators. Broadly, Nautilus is the officers' and professionals' organisation and the RMT the ratings' union, but both will speak on pay, safety and manning, and their positions on a dispute are rarely identical.

Underneath both sits the Maritime Labour Convention, 2006. The International Labour Organization calls it the "seafarers' bill of rights", says it "came into force on 20 August 2013 – effectively becoming binding in international law", and describes it as the "fourth pillar" of the international regulatory regime for quality shipping, complementing the IMO conventions dealing with safety and security of ships and protection of the marine environment. The ILO says it sets out in one place seafarers' rights to decent conditions of work covering, among others, minimum age, employment agreements, hours of work or rest, payment of wages, paid annual leave, repatriation at the end of contract and onboard medical care.

Two documents matter operationally. The ILO says ships carry a Maritime Labour Certificate and a Declaration of Maritime Labour Compliance, which provide "prima facie evidence that the ships are in compliance with the requirements of the Convention" and are "subject to inspection when ships enter the ports of other countries". In UK law the main implementing instrument is the Merchant Shipping (Maritime Labour Convention) (Minimum Requirements for Seafarers etc.) Regulations 2014, which covers minimum age, recruitment and placement services, seafarer employment agreements, wages, repatriation, crew accommodation, food and catering, medical care, shipowner liability, and inspection and detention. When a welfare complaint reaches you, the useful question is which of those specific requirements is said to have been breached.

Vessel tracking: what AIS is and is not

The Automatic Identification System is a safety-of-navigation requirement that happens to be publicly receivable. The International Maritime Organization says the carriage requirement sits in SOLAS regulation V/19 and applies to "all ships of 300 gross tonnage and upwards engaged on international voyages, cargo ships of 500 gross tonnage and upwards not engaged on international voyages and all passenger ships irrespective of size". It says AIS provides automatically "the ship's identity, type, position, course, speed, navigational status and other safety-related information".

The data is self-reported. AIS is broadcast by the ship about itself. It is not a radar return, a satellite photograph or an official position record, and it should never be described in copy as a track "confirmed by authorities" unless an authority has actually confirmed it.
The rule contains its own exception. SOLAS provides that "Ships fitted with AIS shall maintain AIS in operation at all times except where international agreements, rules or standards provide for the protection of navigational information." A gap in a track is a gap in a broadcast. It may be equipment failure, coverage, or a deliberate decision — and your copy should say which of those you established, if any.
Coverage is uneven. Terrestrial AIS receivers only hear ships within range of the coast; satellite AIS fills gaps but is a commercial product with its own revisit intervals. A vessel that "disappears" mid-ocean on a free tracking site has frequently just left terrestrial coverage.
Identity travels with the IMO number, not the name. Names, flags, registered owners and managers can all change quickly; the IMO number does not. UK sanctions law reflects this: regulation 57F of the Russia (Sanctions) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019 identifies a specified ship "by its International Maritime Organization number or, where it is not reasonably practicable to identify it by that number, by any other means that the Secretary of State considers appropriate".
A screenshot is not a source. Save the underlying data with timestamps and the receiver source, and put the observation to the operator, the harbour authority or the relevant agency before publishing an inference drawn from it.

Checking a vessel: flag, ownership and inspection history

Equasis ↑

A tool aimed at reducing substandard shipping, developed and hosted by the French Ministry in charge of the Sea and Fisheries with the participation of several states including the UK. It provides safety-related information on ships and companies, drawn from classification societies and port state control authorities. Registration is required; its services are free of charge.

Paris MoU inspection search ↑

Port state control inspection records for ships calling at Paris MoU ports, with deficiencies and detentions. The place to establish whether a vessel has a clean track record or a documented history of deficiencies.

Paris MoU detentions and bannings ↑

Current detentions and current bannings lists, plus ship risk profiles and company performance data — useful when an operator characterises something as an isolated incident.

The UK Sanctions List ↑

The published list of designated persons and specified ships under UK sanctions regimes. Check a vessel here before describing it as sanctioned, and cite the designation rather than a news report of it.

MMO public register ↑

Marine licence applications and decisions for activities in English waters — dredging, disposal, construction, cabling. A dated, searchable record of who asked to do what, and what the answer was.

Companies House ↑

For privately owned port groups and UK-incorporated shipping companies: accounts, charges, directors and persons with significant control. Remember that a trust port constituted as a statutory corporation will not appear here at all.

The shadow fleet and sanctions

"Shadow fleet" and "dark fleet" are journalistic and policy shorthand rather than legal terms, so the discipline is to report the designation rather than the label. UK law now allows individual ships to be targeted. Regulation 57F of the Russia (Sanctions) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019 allows the Secretary of State to specify a ship where there are reasonable grounds to suspect that the ship "is, has been, or is likely to be, involved in a relevant activity". Relevant activity is defined to include use of the ship for any activity whose object or effect is to destabilise Ukraine, to benefit or support the Government of Russia, or to breach or circumvent the Regulations, and it extends to carrying dual-use goods, military equipment, Russian oil or oil products, liquefied natural gas or coal, including by ship-to-ship transfer. The ship is identified by its IMO number wherever that is reasonably practicable.

The scale is documented. A GOV.UK announcement of 16 June 2026 states that "Today's sanctions further crack down on Russia's decrepit and ageing shadow fleet, targeting more than 20 oil tankers with new and enhanced powers introduced last month", and that "To date, the UK has now sanctioned more than 600 shadow fleet and Russian LNG vessels." Those are the kinds of figures to quote — sourced, dated and attributed to the department that published them.

Reporting rule: an old tanker with opaque ownership, a recently changed flag and an AIS gap is a set of observations, not a finding. Before writing that a vessel is part of a sanctions-evading fleet, either point to its entry on the UK Sanctions List, or attribute the characterisation to a named body that has made it. Otherwise report the observations, say what they could indicate, and put them to the owner, the flag state and the relevant department.

FOI, EIR and the port authority trap

This is the part of the beat that catches experienced reporters. The Ports Good Governance Guidance states at paragraph 2.28 that "Private and trust port SHAs in England and Wales are not subject to the Freedom of Information Act 2001 (FOI)" — the guidance mis-cites the year, and the statute is the Freedom of Information Act 2000, but the substance is right. The same paragraph continues: "LAs are subject to the Freedom of Information Act and the Environmental Information Regulations, so SHAs owned by LAs are also subject to that legislation." Paragraph 4.12 repeats the point in the section dealing with local authority owned ports.

Establish the ownership model first. Ask the port, or read its constitution page. A council-owned port is reachable through the council under FOIA; a trust port or a private port is not a FOIA body at all, so an FOIA request to one is not merely likely to be refused, it is addressed to the wrong statute.
Use the Environmental Information Regulations 2004 for anything environmental. The EIR definition is wider than FOIA. Regulation 2(2)(c) covers "any other body or person, that carries out functions of public administration", and the ICO identifies Fish Legal v IC and Others [2015] UKUT 52 (AAC) as the leading authority, with the conditions being entrustment and the vesting of special powers. Harbour authorities exercising statutory powers have been treated as public authorities for environmental information in ICO casework — but argue the point rather than assuming it, and expect the port to contest it.
Define "environmental information" accurately. Dredging and disposal, air and water quality, noise, emissions from berthed vessels, land reclamation, habitat, and the measures and plans affecting them all sit comfortably inside the EIR definition. Purely commercial contracting generally does not.
Go to the bodies that are covered. The Department for Transport, the Marine Management Organisation, Defra, the Environment Agency, the local authority and the harbour’s statutory consultees are all FOIA public authorities and all hold correspondence with the port.
Use the statutory publications instead. Every SHA must produce annual accounts and reports under the Harbours Act 1964 in line with the Companies Act 2006 and provide them to the Secretary of State for Transport, and must publish standard dues tariffs. Those are obtainable without any access regime at all.
For a privately owned group, Companies House is the substitute for FOI: accounts, charges, group structure, directors and persons with significant control.

For the wider problem of organisations that look public but are not, see bodies not covered by FOI, and for the council-side route into a municipal port see local government reporting.

Accuracy traps

The MCA and the MAIB are not interchangeable

The MCA is "an executive agency of the Department for Transport" that regulates, surveys, inspects and prosecutes. The MAIB is "an independent unit within the Department for Transport" that investigates and publishes and, in its own words, "does not apportion blame and it does not establish liability, enforce laws or carry out prosecutions". Attributing an enforcement decision to the MAIB, or a causation finding to the MCA, is a category error that both bodies will correct.

An MAIB report is not a verdict

Regulation 5 of the Merchant Shipping (Accident Reporting and Investigation) Regulations 2012 makes prevention the sole objective and expressly excludes determining liability. Report causal and contributory factors as the MAIB frames them, and leave fault to the tribunal whose job it is to decide fault.

A trust port is not a trust, and is not public

Dover Harbour Board’s own constitution page says that ports constituted this way "are generally known as trust ports, although they are not actually trusts". They have no shareholders and no beneficiaries in the legal sense, they are not FOIA bodies, and where constituted as statutory corporations they are not registered at Companies House. Each of those is a fact a reporter can get wrong in a single sentence.

A freeport is not a place on a map

It is a bundle of designated customs sites and tax sites within an outer boundary. Before writing that a company is "in the freeport" and therefore receiving reliefs, check the published maps and the current designations in the Freeports Handbook.

Do not report a proposal as law

Section 56 of the Employment Rights Act 2025, which amends the Seafarers’ Wages Act 2023, is annotated on legislation.gov.uk as "not in force at Royal Assent", and the DfT factsheet says commencement of the mandatory Seafarers’ Charter "is expected to be in December 2026". Until commencement, what is in force is the Seafarers’ Wages Act 2023 as operated through the Seafarers’ Wages Regulations 2024, in force since 1 December 2024 and amended from 1 April 2025.

An AIS gap is not a fact about a ship

It is a fact about a broadcast. SOLAS itself permits AIS not to be maintained where international agreements, rules or standards provide for the protection of navigational information, and terrestrial reception is limited by range. Say what you observed, say what you could not establish, and never let a tracking screenshot carry an allegation on its own.

"Shadow fleet" is a label; a designation is a fact

Report that a vessel appears on the UK Sanctions List, or that a named body has characterised it a particular way. Applying the label yourself to a vessel that has not been designated is an allegation about its owners as well as about the ship.

English machinery is not UK-wide

The Marine Management Organisation is England’s marine manager, sponsored by Defra. The Ports Good Governance Guidance applies to statutory harbour authorities in England and, since 1 April 2018, in Wales only to reserved trust ports. Scotland and Northern Ireland have their own port governance and marine management arrangements. The MCA, the MAIB and the Seafarers’ Wages Act 2023 do operate across the UK — check which category your institution falls into before generalising.

Story ideas and angles

1.Read your harbour authority’s constitution and its last three sets of annual accounts, produced under the Harbours Act 1964, and test the board’s stated stakeholder duties against what it actually spent and on whom.
2.Take every MAIB report involving vessels operating from your port over five years and audit the recommendations: who they were addressed to, who accepted them, and what the Chief Inspector’s Annual Report says about the ones that were rejected.
3.Follow the Seafarers’ Wages declarations. Ask your harbour authority how many operators were asked for a declaration, how many provided one, how many surcharges were imposed and whether access was ever refused.
4.Check the freeport promise against the freeport delivery: the jobs and investment figures in the original announcement, the current designated tax and customs sites, and what has actually been built on them.
5.Compare Paris MoU inspection and detention records for ships regularly calling at your port with the port’s own public statements about vessel standards.
6.Map ferry route changes and crewing arrangements on your local services against Seafarers’ Charter status, and ask operators who have not achieved status which requirement they have not met.
7.Use the MMO public register to reconstruct the licensing history of a contested dredging, disposal or reclamation scheme, then request the environmental information behind it under the EIR.
8.Establish who really owns your local port: the Companies House group structure and persons with significant control for a private group, or the appointment mechanism and board composition for a trust port.
9.Track a single vessel with an unexplained AIS gap in your coastal waters — then do the work the screenshot cannot do: the IMO number, the flag history, the inspection record, the sanctions list and the owner’s response.

Further statutory references

Frequently asked questions

Is the Maritime and Coastguard Agency part of the government, and how is it different from the MAIB?

They sit in the same department but they are not the same kind of body, and the difference decides who you ask what. GOV.UK states that "The Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA) is an executive agency of the Department for Transport (DfT)". It says the MCA works "to prevent the loss of life on the coast and at sea", provides a 24-hour maritime and coastal search and rescue emergency coordination and response service for the United Kingdom, produces legislation and guidance on maritime matters, certifies seafarers, and enforces standards for ship safety, security, pollution prevention and seafarer health, safety and welfare through survey and inspection. The Marine Accident Investigation Branch is described on GOV.UK as "an independent unit within the Department for Transport", and its own information leaflet of May 2026 calls it "a branch of the Department for Transport", based in Southampton with four teams of accident investigators. So the MCA regulates, surveys, inspects and prosecutes; the MAIB investigates and publishes, and does neither of the first two. Sending an enforcement question to the MAIB, or a causation question to the MCA, will normally get you a redirection rather than an answer.

Does an MAIB report tell me who was to blame?

No, and the regulations say so in terms. Regulation 5(1) of the Merchant Shipping (Accident Reporting and Investigation) Regulations 2012 provides that "The sole objective of a safety investigation into an accident under these Regulations shall be the prevention of future accidents through the ascertainment of its causes and circumstances". Regulation 5(2) adds that "It shall not be the purpose of such an investigation to determine liability nor, except so far as is necessary to achieve its objective, to apportion blame." The MAIB information leaflet puts the same point plainly: "The Branch does not apportion blame and it does not establish liability, enforce laws or carry out prosecutions." A report can still be devastating, because it establishes what happened, how and why. But writing that "the MAIB found the master responsible" misdescribes the document. Write that the MAIB identified a causal or contributory factor, and leave questions of liability to the courts, the coroner or the sheriff.

Can I send a Freedom of Information request to a port?

Usually not — and this is the single most common wasted request on the beat. The Department for Transport’s Ports Good Governance Guidance of March 2018 states that "Private and trust port SHAs in England and Wales are not subject to the Freedom of Information Act 2001 (FOI)" — the guidance mis-cites the year, and the Act is the Freedom of Information Act 2000, but the substance is right. The same guidance says that "LAs are subject to the Freedom of Information Act and the Environmental Information Regulations, so SHAs owned by LAs are also subject to that legislation." So a council-owned port such as Portsmouth International Port, which its own website says is "Owned and operated by Portsmouth City Council", is reachable through the council. A trust port such as the Port of London Authority or Dover Harbour Board, and a privately owned port, are not FOIA bodies at all. That is not the end of the route: the Environmental Information Regulations 2004 have a wider definition, and regulation 2(2)(c) covers "any other body or person, that carries out functions of public administration". The ICO identifies Fish Legal v IC and Others [2015] UKUT 52 (AAC) as the leading authority on that test, and says the conditions are entrustment and the vesting of special powers. Harbour authorities exercising statutory powers have been handled as public authorities for environmental information in ICO casework. Frame the request as environmental information under the EIR, and be ready to argue the point rather than assume it.

What is a trust port, and is it actually a trust?

No, despite the name. The Ports Good Governance Guidance says at paragraph 3.3 that "Trust ports are independent statutory bodies, with responsibility to manage, maintain and improve a harbour. Trust ports operate on a commercial basis generally without ongoing public sector financial support but have no shareholders. Surpluses are re-invested in the harbour for the benefit of stakeholders, including harbour users, local communities and government." It quotes earlier DfT guidance describing a trust port as "a valuable asset presently safeguarded by the existing board whose duty it is to hand it on in the same or better condition to succeeding generations". Dover Harbour Board makes the caveat explicit on its own constitution page: it is "an independent statutory corporation, created by the Crown to administer, maintain and improve the harbour of Dover", it "has no shareholders", and "Ports constituted in this way are generally known as trust ports, although they are not actually trusts." There are no beneficiaries in the legal sense and no trust deed to obtain. What there is, in Dover’s case, is a board of nine members constituted by statutory instrument, and an annual report and accounts prepared in accordance with the Companies Act 2006 and filed with the Department for Transport even though the Board is not registered at Companies House and has no company number.

How many UK freeports are there and where are they?

Twelve. The UK government’s freeports site lists eight in England — Freeport East, East Midlands Freeport, Humber Freeport, Liverpool City Region Freeport, Plymouth and South Devon Freeport, Solent Freeport, Teesside Freeport and Thames Freeport; two green freeports in Scotland — Forth Green Freeport and Inverness and Cromarty Firth Green Freeport; and two in Wales — Anglesey Freeport and Celtic Freeport. The Freeports Handbook, last updated on 1 June 2026, records that the eight English freeports were announced in March 2021, the two Scottish green freeports in January 2023 and the two Welsh freeports in March 2023, and says freeports across the UK "are intended to: create economic regeneration and jobs, be national hubs for global trade and investment, be hotbeds for innovation". Note that a freeport is not a single fenced site: the handbook describes a customs site, also called a free zone, as "a designated customs area in which an authorised business can import and then store, or process, duty suspended goods", and separate tax sites carry the tax reliefs. Check the handbook and the published maps for the current designated sites before writing that a particular business is "in the freeport".

What changed in law after P&O Ferries dismissed its crews in March 2022?

Two things so far, with a third in progress. The Department for Transport’s own factsheet on the mandatory Seafarers’ Charter records that the voluntary Charter launched in 2023 "was part of the response to P&O Ferries sacking almost 800 seafarers in March 2022 and replacing them with agency workers on worse terms and conditions". First, the Seafarers’ Wages Act 2023, which the same factsheet describes as making "payment of an equivalent to the UK National Minimum Wage for work in UK waters a condition of access to ports for services calling at a UK port at least 120 times a year". Its operative provisions were commenced by regulations, and the Seafarers’ Wages Regulations 2024 came into force on 1 December 2024, amended by the Seafarers’ Wages (Amendment) Regulations 2025 from 1 April 2025. Second, the Employment Rights Act 2025, section 56 of which provides that "Schedule 5 amends the Seafarers’ Wages Act 2023" — the DfT factsheet says the 2023 Act "will become the Seafarers’ (Wages and Working Conditions) Act 2023", and that the new powers cover safety, including roster patterns, fatigue management and safety related training, and remuneration including pay outside UK waters. Third, the detail is being consulted on: the DfT consultation "Strengthening seafarer protections on UK-France routes" ran from 5 June 2026 to 17 July 2026. Be precise about tense. Legislation.gov.uk records that section 56 was "not in force at Royal Assent", and the DfT factsheet says commencement of the mandatory Charter "is expected to be in December 2026".

Can I rely on AIS vessel-tracking websites?

For most stories yes, with two caveats you should state in the copy. AIS is a carriage requirement, not a surveillance system. The International Maritime Organization says SOLAS regulation V/19 requires AIS on "all ships of 300 gross tonnage and upwards engaged on international voyages, cargo ships of 500 gross tonnage and upwards not engaged on international voyages and all passenger ships irrespective of size", and that it automatically provides "the ship’s identity, type, position, course, speed, navigational status and other safety-related information". The first caveat is that the data is broadcast by the ship about itself, so it is only as reliable as the equipment and the crew operating it. The second is that the rule contains its own exception: "Ships fitted with AIS shall maintain AIS in operation at all times except where international agreements, rules or standards provide for the protection of navigational information." A gap in a track is therefore evidence of a gap in the broadcast, not proof of a location, a transhipment or an intent. Where a vessel’s identity matters, anchor the story to the IMO number rather than the name: names, flags and managers change, the IMO number does not, and UK sanctions law itself identifies a specified ship "by its International Maritime Organization number".

Which unions represent seafarers, and what is the Maritime Labour Convention?

Two unions cover most of the UK workforce between them. The RMT describes itself as "Britain’s largest specialist transport trade union" with "more than 83,000 members from almost every sector of the transport industry - from the mainline and underground railways, shipping and offshore, buses and road freight", and it is the main union for ratings. Nautilus International describes itself as "the global maritime union" and as "an independent, influential global trade union and professional association", organised across the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Switzerland, and representing maritime professionals including officers, harbour masters, marine pilots and VTS operators. The Maritime Labour Convention, 2006 is the international floor beneath both. The International Labour Organization calls it the "seafarers’ bill of rights", says it "came into force on 20 August 2013 – effectively becoming binding in international law", and describes it as the "fourth pillar" of the international regulatory regime for quality shipping, complementing the IMO conventions on safety and security of ships and protection of the marine environment. It sets out rights on minimum age, employment agreements, hours of work or rest, payment of wages, paid annual leave, repatriation at the end of contract and onboard medical care, and ships carry a Maritime Labour Certificate and a Declaration of Maritime Labour Compliance which are "prima facie evidence that the ships are in compliance with the requirements of the Convention" and are inspectable when a ship enters a foreign port. In UK law the main implementing instrument is the Merchant Shipping (Maritime Labour Convention) (Minimum Requirements for Seafarers etc.) Regulations 2014.