Quote:
| Originally Posted by nigelH ARGH!!!!
Acountantspeak.
They add up the total cost and divide by the number of times it is used and call that cost per. It may well cost thousands of pounds a week to have a lifeboat just sitting there used or unused but the cost of sending it out isn't an extra £6000 per pop. |
That quote of £ 6000 is the AVERAGE over all the station over the year, but i guess it's a lot lower than that. Also taken into account of this is the basic running costs, the RNLI Mechanics have a planned maintenance schudule they must do, which includes changing parts at Different hours run.
I'll give you a example of a CALL we did the other week, where we launched to a upturned dinghy with persons reported in the water at 20:00 at night.
There were from the RNLI only 4 boats in use... Dover, Dover 'Yankee' ( our little boat on top we carry, Walmer Atlantic '21' and Walmer D Class. All boats were searching or just under 3 hours each.
For our boat :-
I can tell you that Dover Lifeboat uses 6 lts of diesel per minute per engine at full speed and the RNLI pays .36p per litre, therefore roughly
720 lts are used per hour, which is
£ 260
We used 22 white para flares at a cost of £ 45 each =
£ 990
and thats just what i can remember.
Quote:
| Originally Posted by nigelH I've seen a company go bust because they let accountants do that. These are the kind of silly stories that make people NOT call the coastguard because they don't want to waste a lot of money so they wait until their simple problem has become a disaster |
YOUR wrong there,,,, look at the amount of HOAX calls and calls with good intent.
HOAX calls are where the money is
wasted.
At the end of the day, it's people doing number juggling to see where it's best used and to place assets where needed most. Just by looking on the RNLI site, you can see the busiest top 10 lifeboats and then look what jobs there are doing., stunning , i must say.
Going back to the MCA and choppers,
the big rumour is that the MoD are going to down size the SAR chopper flights over the next couple of years, so all the MCA are doing is getting the best UK SAR coverage up to date without any loss .
And YOU as a diver don't want to wait 2 hours for a chopper coming to you from far up the country, all because of money , do you ? NOPE.
From chatting to a Coastguard the other day, the MCA this tax year had a annual budget of £ 125 million and covers everything,( and just think, the contact for the 5 TUGS splattered around the coast is a £ 75 million contract over 5 years, but the FRENCH do put some in the pot for this ). This is the smallest budget in the civil service for any of the other departments.