Eight foreign-flagged ships were under detention in UK ports last month after failing Port State Control inspection, the Maritime & Coastguard Agency (MCA) has announced.

Latest monthly figures show that there were four new detentions of foreign-flagged ships in UK ports during February and four vessels under detention from the previous month. The overall rate of detentions compared with inspections carried out over the last 12 months was 3%, which is slightly down on January’s 12-month rate.

During February, 151 Port State Control inspections were carried out in the UK. A total of 43 vessels had no deficiencies raised against them, 73 had between one and five deficiencies, 30 had between six and 10 deficiencies, five had between 11 and 20, and one vessel inspected had more than 20 deficiencies.

Of the detained vessels, five were registered with flag states listed on the Paris Memorandum of Understanding on Port State Control white list, none were registered with flag states on the grey list, and two were registered with flag states on the black list. One was unlisted.

The MCA publishes full details of the foreign-flagged vessels detained in UK ports each month.

Inspections of foreign-flagged ships in UK ports are undertaken by surveyors from the MCA. Where a ship is found to be deficient or lacks the required documentation, MCA 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 SIReNaC. This allows the ships of flags with poor detention records to be targeted for future inspection.

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