“Where would we be without them?” said Ray Wicks of his local coastguard volunteers in Shoreham-by-Sea in West Sussex. “If the coastguard weren’t in place, a lot of people would be in trouble.”
He was voicing the fears of some in coastal towns over the Maritime and Coastguard Agency’s (MCA) decision to stop paying about £11 an hour for callouts, in response to a court ruling that the money was among the features classifying coastguard officers as workers – giving them benefits such as paid holiday.
