Research and analysis

R100 - The contribution of shipping to the English economy

Updated 16 January 2019

1. Requirement overview

1.1 Requirement detail

This requirement is to provide a fuller picture of the economic contribution of the ports and shipping sectors. It will do this by identifying datasets that could be combined, or used alongside each other to gain a fuller picture of the economic contribution of ports and shipping.

There are a number of data sets that have been used on a shipping sector basis, primarily: economics (attaching £ values to shipping activities and employment values); shipping activity (vessel types and number of transits); and ports activity (port traffic categorisation, volume and value). These all relate to parts of shipping trade flows – the movement of goods and services relating to shipping. Linking these up should give a clearer picture of the economic importance of ship-based trade and its use of space within a plan area. This would also allow for an improved understanding of the composition of activity of each port allowing the question ‘what proportion is for recreation and what is for commercial shipping?’ to be answered.

The requirement will need to explore what datasets are available to complete this task for example, economic datasets from the Office for National Statistics. It will then need to look at developing a method for combining them, bringing together spatial and non-spatial information. The method will need to be tested, possibly through stakeholder engagement, before a report is produced to highlight its limitations and capabilities for marine planning. For example, this will most likely include an assessment of how robust the outputs are and whether they could be used to justify marine plan policies that differentiate between various ports and shipping routes.

1.2 MMO use

Marine Planning: This will improve delivery of marine plan policies relating to ports and shipping and their consideration alongside other uses of space in marine plan areas.

1.3 External interest

The ports and shipping industry

2. Aims and objectives

2.1 Aim

To improve the understanding of ports and shipping activity.

2.2 Objectives

• review the current ports and shipping data used by marine planning including suggestions for improvement
• assess existing datasets for potential to add value to current use of data by marine planning
• look at ways of combining economic and activity datasets to create an improved understanding of shipping-related trade flows
• suggest how this information could be used, highlighting its limitations and robustness

3. Existing evidence

3.1 MMO

The MMO has undertaken work on shipping activity (MMO1066) using AIS data.

3.2 Academic

Though there is a lot of academic work relating to shipping, much of it is focused on safety, the functioning of shipping trading markets and efficient operating of ships from routing and scheduling viewpoints.

3.3 Other

The [World Shipping Council] (http://www.worldshipping.org/about-the-industry/global-trade/trade-statistics) shows headline statistics on trade, whilst the UK Chamber of Shipping have published a ‘Blueprint for Growth’ for the UK shipping sector, MDS Transmodal have published a report looking at the value of goods passing through UK ports. This uses UK custom data, MDS Transmodal, World Cargo Database and national accounts taken from the ‘UK Trade’ document produced monthly by the UK Office of National Statistics.

4. Current activity

The MMO has a project beginning early 2019 (MMO1158) to review, develop and apply approaches to assign value to different parts of the marine plan areas based on shipping trade flows.

5. Further details

For more information or to add further research to the existing evidence list please emailb evidence@marinemanagement.org.uk