Agenda item

To receive updates from the Weymouth and Bridport & Lyme Regis Harbour Masters.

The Harbour Master presented the update for Bridport and Lyme Regis harbours. The statistics for both harbours were provided and it was explained that staff had undertaken training courses in several areas including first aid, health and safety, customer care and council behaviour.

Lyme Regis had been audited in March 2025 and there had been 15 items identified for improvement in the audit. 8 of these had been addressed and the remaining 7 items would be addressed by the end of the year.

In Bridport the Beach Wheelchair scheme had recently installed a new permanent building to store their beach wheelchairs, which replaced the older temporary container and the flare disposal scheme had also been setup.

The Harbour Master noted the incidents and accidents that had occurred since the last meeting, including a trailer that had come off a vehicle, which had then been recovered, a vessel sinking in its mooring, which had since been recovered by Harbour staff and a dinghy nearly colliding with a passenger vessel.

In response to a question the Harbours Manager stated that although the target for the completion of the outstanding audit points was the end of year, the smaller items had already been addressed and the outstanding items included demonstrating compliance more clearly and it was hoped that the majority of these would be dealt with by September. In addition, Lyme Regis had been audited against the new code, which was released after the audit took place.

The Harbour Master also confirmed that users of the marina were required to sign a document stating that their vessel was in seaworthy condition and that it was insured.

The Harbours Manager presented the update for Weymouth Harbour. He provided the statistics for the harbour and noted that the Weymouth Sailing Club pontoon works had been recently completed in March.

Several incidents had occurred since the last meeting, they included vessels with mechanical failure, report of a vessel being navigated by a person under the influence of alcohol, a person jumping into the harbour and a mast collapsing on a vessel. A new streamlined incident reporting process had been implemented across the three harbours, to provide better data and analysis on the incidents that were occurring.

The Weymouth Harbour Revision Order had been submitted to the Marine Management Organisation and public consultation would begin in June.

A letter had been distributed in collaboration with the RNLI to provide harbour users with a pre-season checklist and the CCTV system in the harbour had been updated to provide better coverage of certain areas.

Maintenance works had been carried out over Winter across the harbour and the work on the town bridge had been pushed back to early 2026. The Weymouth Quay Project had fully opened and the old Fish Landing Quay had been closed since March. Although the fuel pontoon had been setup there had been delays in getting it operational due to changes with the vendor for the payment system and further approval was needed from HMRC.

In response to questions the Harbours Manager confirmed that training would be provided to cover the changes in the new Port Marine Safety Code and that the Weymouth Harbour Revision Order would go through central communications at Dorset Council, in addition to the required consultees.

The committee noted the updates.