LEGALISE PLB LAND USE IN THE UK!!

Any outdoor adventurer in the UK who wants to be rescued in an emergency, and is out of mobile phone range should seriously think about adding their name to a petition on http://www.equineramblersuk.co.uk/personal-locator-beacons.php.

This is set up by the Equine Ramblers UK, a group of long distance horse riders, in support for legislation that will allow the use of a PLB or personal locator beacon in the UK.


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.



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.


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.