The UK Ship Register is looking for a new boss after the shock departure of recently appointed head Simon Barham.
Following Barham’s resignation last week, the Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA)’s director of business improvement and assurance Richard Pellow has taken over on an interim basis.
The MCA has wasted no time in posting a job advertisement to find Barham’s replacement, offering a salary of up to £90,000 ($118,000) annually for the right candidate to fill the post.
Barham’s departure comes as a blow the UK government’s plan to grow the Red Ensign, one of shipping’s most iconic flags.
He was appointed in January this year, according to some sources, after an expensive head-hunting campaign, as someone from commercial shipping who could make the UK Ship Register more customer friendly and commercially attractive to owners.
He immediately set a target of doubling the size of the fleet in the next five years.
As part of that process Barham was tasked with helping to distance the ship register from the bureaucratic processes of the MCA and making it more autonomous.
A spokesperson for the MCA said that Barham had departed on “good terms” and for “personal reasons”.
She said that the MCA is grateful for the work Barham had done and that the programme of reform would continue.
“We will keep working to improve the UK flag and remain committed to the maritime growth strategy,” she said.
Clarkson’s World Fleet Monitor ranks the UK as the 13th-largest flag state in the world with 1,152 ships amounting to 14.4 million gt.
During Barham’s time at the MCA the flag grew by 2.3%.
The UK register was named as the best performing flag in terms of limiting detentions and deficiencies in the Paris MOU port-state-control annual report.
