It has been quite the start to the New Year, and one none of us wanted. Things have moved quickly this week and on Monday evening the Prime Minister announced another full scale lockdown for England. Last night the government also announced a new raft of measures for pre-departure testing. At the Chamber we constantly assess the impact these policy changes have on our members and work with government to rectify any issues which will impact the shipping industry. If members are concerned about any changes do reach out to the team and we will be happy to provide assistance.

Over the festive period we were pleased to see the UK government agree a deal with the EU which delivers on the their key objectives identified at the outset of the negotiations while for the EU it represents a fair and balanced agreement which will enable us to move on from Brexit. We know there have been some issues this week and as the amount of freight being moved increases it is possible we will see more issues in the coming weeks. We continue to monitor the situation closely.

The start of 2021 sees some new events from the Chamber. In two weeks’ time we will be hosting an alternative fuels webinar. As the shipping industry transitions to meet its commitments to reducing Green House Gas emissions, cleaner fuels are already available and can contribute to the start of this journey. You can register your place on our website.

In just over a month’s time we will be hosting our first ever Virtual Conference. We have added V.Group to our list of Gold Sponsors which also includes Northern Marine, Denholm Shipping and UK Ship Register and we will be announcing more in the coming weeks. We were also delighted to confirm Condor and CalMac as Silver Sponsors.

The panel sessions have a range of leading industry experts and the day will be overseen by Paddy Rodgers. The full programme and tickets can be found here.

We were delighted to confirm this week the Honourable Company of Master Mariners is the latest organisation to join the Chamber. I know everyone at the Chamber looks forward to working with them over the coming months.

Finally this week, our member survey is still open. If you haven’t managed to complete it yet there is still time. It only takes a few minutes and it is hugely important for us to identify where things are going well and areas we can look to improve.