Gary King – Examiner
Phone : 01480 812225 or Mobile 07714295233
The Boat Safety Scheme is owned by the Canal & River Trust and Environment Agency. It is supported and promoted by the Association of Inland Navigation Authorities. The Scheme is administered by © Canal & River Trust which is registered charity in England and Wales (1146792)
Boat Safety Scheme certification reports are now created online by the examiner entering the details of his findings into the BSS database which most navigation authorities have access to. These reports now carry BSSER reference numbers.
Although participating navigation authorities have access to the BSS online database, boat owners, insurance companies, marinas, brokers etc cannot log into the BSS database directly.
This is because cannot release the data openly and it is because the BSS does not hold any detail about who owns or is the registered keeper of any particular boat
A Boat Safety Scheme Certificate is valid for four years. An Annex XV Declaration of Conformity to Recreational Craft Directive can often be used for its first four years to support a boat registration and a Annex IIIa Declaration can be accepted for the first 12 months – but whichever is supporting your boat’s registration, the examination can be carried up to two months early.
Make arrangements in advance
You can book an examination up to (but not exceeding) two months before your old BSS certification runs out (or RCD Declaration of Conformity recognition for licensing purposes).
If your boat passes with two months or less left on your existing certification, the examiner will post-date the new certificate to start from the date when either the old one expired; the fourth anniversay of the DoC or first-year date of the Annex IIIa document.
This means you do not lose any of the full four-year, or one-year validity of the existing document as relevant.