The RYA has called on the government to abandon plans to include recreational boats in its e-Borders programme.

Two proposals have been submitted to HM Treasury, with the RYA also keen to reduce bureaucracy for organisations that provide activites for young people.

e-Borders is an electronic system used to carry out checks on those crossing the UK border and it is intended to help identify people considered to be security threats.

But the RYA has told the government that there is ‘no demonstrable security case’ to extend the scheme to recreational sailors and it is not suitable for their unscheduled movements.

Gus Lewis, RYA legal and government affairs manager said: ‘The government’s spending review provides us with an opportunity to challenge on financial grounds certain issues affecting recreational boating.

‘We have therefore taken this opportunity to highlight two key areas in which the government could cut its expenditure to no real detriment to its overarching policies, but to the benefit of recreational boating.

‘In our view the extension of the e-Borders programme to the recreational boating sector will, at significant cost to the taxpayer, fail to enhance detection at the border as intended and will not deliver value for money.

‘The RYA accordingly proposes that the part of the e-Borders project concerned with the reporting of cross-border movements by recreational vessels should be discontinued.’

Alongside its e-Borders proposals, the RYA also is trying to lessen the bureaucracy that surrounds organisations and individuals who provide adventure activites for under-18s.

Currently people have to undergo two separate government inspection and accreditation processes, subjecting them to additional bureaucracy and cost, as well as repeating administration across different government departments.

The RYA wants to consolidate the processes across the departments and wants accreditation from national governing bodies, such as the RYA, where the safety standards are equivalent, to be accepted by the government.

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