Search and rescue workers from the UK coastguard are being supplied with practising that can help them to protect their actions at a future inquiry into how on the very least 27 folk died in the Channel final year, the Guardian has learned.

In August, HM Coastguard awarded a £19,200 contract to the practising firm Bond Solon to put together operational search and rescue workers to give evidence in suitable hearings, which is involving to “present assurances that they are performing their tasks based mostly on anticipated processes that shall be challenged in an inquest or inquiry”.

The Emergencies on Trial one-day practising programs are supposed to be delivered between October 2022 and March 2023.

The practising will put together tactical and strategic contributors of the coastguard to solution scandalous-examination, discuss successfully and familiarise themselves with evidence. The purpose of the practising is to manufacture coastguard workers with “consciousness and working out of the correct want of recording choices in shipping of search and rescue incidents within the United Kingdom suitable framework”.

The UK coastguard search and rescue response to the drownings in the Channel on 24 November 2021 has been strongly criticised, after it emerged that the 34 folk onboard the sinking dinghy had waited bigger than 12 hours for a rescue vessel or plane to reach on the scene. By the level toughen arrived, all but two of the passengers had drowned or died of exposure.

Name records released as allotment an investigation into the incident by the French authorities demonstrate that over the route of the evening the UK coastguard continued to disclaim that the dinghy became in British waters. The records demonstrate that the boat entered British waters at 2.30am.

In a listing released final week, the Marine Accident Investigation Branch (MAIB) authorized that some lives had been lost in British waters and that calls had been made to the UK coastguard on the evening of 24 November. It added: “The MAIB became aware of this incident on the time but did now not utilize any scamper.”

The MAIB is investigating the incident and it is identified there shall be no formal inquiry into what took save till that investigation is concluded.

The Bond Solon contract has been seen by attorneys and search and rescue consultants as the indispensable indication that an inquest is drawing conclude. It follows the originate of a legal investigation of the French coastguard by the French authorities final month.

A Maritime and Coastguard Agency spokesperson said: “We present this draw of practising recurrently as workers are mechanically requested to reduction coroner’s inquests and fatal accident inquiries attributable to the nature of our work.”

Maria Thomas, from Duncan Lewis, the guidelines agency representing many of us whose relatives died in the incident, said: “On behalf of our purchasers, we reiterate that an self sustaining, public inquiry needs to occur promptly and as rapidly as conceivable to make certain that transparency and accountability for the biggest lack of existence in the Channel for over three a protracted time.”