Personal locator beacons to be legally used in the UK

Support for legislation that will allow the use of a PLB or personal locator beacon to be legally used in the UK to get emergency assistance has been taken up by Equine Ramblers UK, a group of long distance horse riders who have set up a petition on their website. Any outdoor adventurer who wants to be rescued in an emergency, and is out of mobile phone range should seriously think about adding their name to this site.

The Equine Ramblers are acutely aware of the dangers that their members could face if riding in a remote part of the UK, where there's no mobile phone signal, an issue that faces all outdoor recreations, from walkers to climbers, kayakers and bikers, as well as commercial operators such as farmers and forest rangers.

The PLB, already fully supported in a number of countries with a response and rescue infrastructure, including the USA and Australia, transmits via a worldwide satellite system, COSPAS SARSAT. This alerts regional search and rescue authorities who can quickly get to the scene of an emergency. Currently in the UK the only infrastructure in place to handle distress signals is for sea-going users and aviators. It is operated by the MCA - the Maritime Coastguard Agency, which holds a database of registered users, in co-operation with RAF Kinloss which would alert the nearest Search and Rescue operation to go to a maritime or aviation emergency. The system simply is not set up for land based incidents, which are currently all under the jurisdiction of the Police.

Because of the global operation of the satellite system, the signal can be picked up anywhere in the world, if there's a government-approved organisation in place to handle it, so it's all the more frustrating that UK doesn't support it.

Portsmouth, UK based McMurdo manufactures the FastFind PLB, one of the world's best selling PLB models. “We sell thousands of PLBs to land based users worldwide, explains McMurdo's Sales & Marketing Director Jeremy Harrison, “and many thousands more to sea going vessels”.

He adds “Would be land-based PLB users often think it's McMurdo's fault that they can't use PLBs in the UK, and that we just aren't getting our paperwork in order. But it's quite a lot more complex than that. The database registry currently being used by the MCA would have to be replicated and stored by the Police. Since the Police operate from regional call centres around the UK it would mean installing equipment and people on a large scale.

McMurdo is constantly under pressure to join the lobby to legalise PLBs, but as a manufacturer with a vested interest, believes it is more effective to let voices be heard come from the would-be users themselves, and welcomes the efforts of Equine Ramblers' UK.

There is a strong feeling that adventurers on land are being discriminated against. An aircraft that crashes into the sea and activates a PLB will get rescued, as the sea is under MCA jurisdiction, but for a broken arm hanging off a rope in a remote Scottish mountain range, there's no back up.

The pro-PLB movement is growing, as more people seek to get away from the pressures of life and get involved with Outward Bound-type adventures. More than 22,000 lives have been saved by the COSPAS-SARSAT system since it was installed in 1996, so the government are not going to be able to ignore this issue for much longer.

Personal locator beacons to be legally used in the UK

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