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• Sea Angling 2012
• Fishing Focus

Guidance

The UK fisheries administrations' guidance notes have been re-written into clear English. They are as follows and copies are also available from your local Marine Management Organisation office).

• Fishing vessel licensing: An introduction (PDF 464 KB)
• Applying for a fishing vessel licence (PDF 211 KB)
• Making changes to your fishing vessel licence (this is currently being reviewed)

Changes to fishing vesssel licensing arrangements

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) and the Welsh Government will be making changes to fishing licensing arrangements in England and Wales in light of the recommendations made by the fifth report of the Licence Review Working Group (LRWG).

The changes will be:

• A re-opening of the special time-limited scheme to allow for the replacement or modernisation of pelagic freezer and purse seine vessels, and allow the use (in part) of licence entitlements from whitefish vessels.
• Removing the single licence transfer penalty (5 per cent of overall capacity) on all licence transactions.
• Allowing more flexibility in disaggregating licence entitlements.
• Increasing the validity period for a licence entitlement from 3 to 5 years.

Other recommendations made by the report were:

• for fisheries administrations to issue clear guidance on the application of effort eligibility and licensing rules (this work is ongoing)
• to maintain the current licence categories and arrangements for scallop licensing and shellfish permits (a continuation of business as usual).

Full details are set out in the Annex to this announcement, and further clarification on any of the points are available from the Fisheries Management and Effort Control Team, Tel: 0191 376 2597 or from your local Marine Management Organisation office.

Some of these changes are for a time limited period only. Defra and the Welsh Government will review the impact of these recommendations and where appropriate will make changes as and if necessary, including the possible reintroduction of a licence transfer penalty.

• Changes to fishing vesssel licensing arrangements (PDF 112 KB)
  This document is in the portable document format (PDF) for downloading. Adobe Acrobat Reader can be freely downloaded from www.adobe.com/uk/