Membership

Members of the Workboat Association during a site visit of Scottish Sea Farms

Membership with the Workboat Association offers a wide range of benefits tailored primarily to Workboat Owners and Operators, but also for Charterers, stakeholder Businesses and independent Professionals within the workboat industry.

Industry Representation & Advocacy

• Liaison with regulatory bodies: The WA acts as a bridge between its members and regulatory authorities, such as Flag/Port states.
• Influence on policy: We put the spotlight on member’s to have their voice in shaping safety, technical, and operational standards.

Guidance and Support

• Guiding industry best practice: We help members in setting, meeting and maintaining industry best practices, supporting them with free Q&A and consultation services.
• Literature and training tools: Access to free good practice guidance, safety tools, training videos and presentations via our website members area “WA on Demand”. ^{*some costs are necessary for products such as electronic training record books, printed educational books, towage assessments and external literature).}
• Support for professional development: The WA maintains a ethic of continued professional development, pinpointing opportunities for sector-wide improvement and providing the necessary systems and network to facilitate it.

WA Activity

• We commit to 2 x big events per year, Seawork held in June (in 2025 there were 14 x WA side events, including our annual dinner which sat 182 people) and our AGM event, held in November. The WA 2024 AGM saw over 170 attendees for the two day event.
• We run quarterly workgroup meetings of our Training, Technical and Safety Forum and industry specific Subgroups such as Crew Transfer, Pilot Vessels and Towage – these are a mix of online and face-to-face meetings. But, all meetings are live online or recorded and posted in the members area of our website. So you cant miss anything due to travel commitments, urgent matters, conflicting agendas etc…
• We run regular networking events (sporting events, dinners, location visits etc), and training days throughout the year (training schedule depends of member interests, trends and demand).

Networking & Collaboration

• Connect with over 650 regularly active individuals from within the membership: The WA boasts a membership base of close to 300 companies, activity within the association is extremely healthy, with a wide range of event attendance and commitment.
• Be one of the crowd: The WA holds collaboration as one of its most important objectives. We collaborate with and commit to a wide variety of like-minded industry organisations to ensure that the small commercial vessel sector is equally represented and considered within the bigger Maritime picture.

Membership Options

• Flexible tiers: Options for full, corporate, and individual memberships based on vessel ownership and size.
• Affordable rates: Boat Owning/Operator members have not seen an increase in membership subscriptions since 2017! In fact within that time, we have even decreased membership contributions for 5 of the years, making a 50% deduction in membership subs during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Full members (Boat owning) subscriptions are based on the number of UK Coded Workboats only, vessel owners not owning any UK Workboat coded vessels are welcomed to join us as a Corporate Member. 

Membership levels

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