Who you deal with
The Maritime and Coastguard Agency, Ship Standards, in Southampton. Day-to-day certification is delegated to certifying authorities listed in the Code.
At twelve passengers
The Sport or Pleasure Vessel Code, in force since 12 December 2025. It does something unusual and very much in this boat's favour. It makes the recreational design category itself the qualifying criterion for an area category of operation, so category C admits the boat to area categories 4, 5 and 6 outright. Better still, the Code names Module A1, the precise conformity route this boat was assessed under, as an accepted basis for assigning that area category from the Declaration of Conformity, in place of the Code's own stability testing.
At twenty passengers
The Small Seagoing Passenger Ship Code. The design category does nothing here, but the Code's stability requirements for simple ships are a far easier gate than the inland equivalent, and our existing stability work clears them with room to spare. This is the best-documented twenty-passenger route in Europe.
Who may drive it
Above twelve passengers, a Boat Master's Licence is a suitable qualification. At twelve or fewer under the newer Code we could not verify the requirement, as the Code cross-refers to the 2022 training and certification regulations.
Hiring it out without a crew
Not resolved. The Code excludes pleasure vessels, and the CE regime covers craft placed on the market for recreational use including bareboat hire, but whether a bareboat-chartered boat escapes the Code in British practice turns on how the pleasure vessel definition applies to a paying hirer.
Where the engine matters
Internal combustion is prohibited on roughly twenty Lake District lakes under bye-laws dating from 1971.