The government has scaled back its plans to reduce the UK’s coastguard service after public protest, although some closures will still go ahead.
Original plans would have seen the 19 centres across the UK reduced to eight, with only three remaining open 24 hours a day.
In a statement to the Commons, transport secretary Philip Hammond announced that 11 centres are to remain open and operated for 24 hours.
He told MPs there would be one operations centre in the Southampton and Portsmouth area, as well as eight sub-stations, that will be 24 hour operational, at Falmouth, Milford Haven, Holyhead, Belfast, Stornoway, Shetland, Aberdeen and Humber.
Stations at Clyde, Forth, Liverpool, Yarmouth, Brixham, Thames and Swansea were all set to close.
Hammond said it was still possible to achieve the government’s costs savings intended with the plans to operate only three stations round the clock, as well as five sub-centres during daylight hours.
However, there will be still job losses, with the number of uniformed coastguards falling from 573 to 436 by 2014/15.
Over 1,800 responses, including many from serving coastguards, were received during public consultation on the original proposals, Hammond said.
New plans set out today will be put to consultation, with October 6 set as the deadline for opinions.
Shadow transport secretary Angela Eagle said the government was still putting their desire to reduce costs ahead of the safety of maritime communities.
However, she said the government decision to revise the original plans was a tribute to the coastguards who had campaigned against the closures.
She told MPs: "It's incredible to think that you believed that the majority of our coastguard stations should not provide round-the-clock cover.
"It's right, and I commend you, for abandoning your plans and recognising the need for stations to operate 24 hours a day.
"However, today's announcement means the loss of just under half of all Britain's coastguard stations.
"That is a devastating blow to those stations which you propose to close - to the coastguards, their families and the communities they serve and in which they are held in such respect.
"These closures are driven entirely by the government's decision to cut the transport budget too far and too fast.
"It's incredible today focused almost entirely on issues of cost, rather than on the safety considerations that should have driven this review from the start."
She said the reforms were about "cutting budgets" and not about improving the safety of the coastline, with the proposals being "ill thought-out, careless and rushed ".
Eagle called on the government to launch a new consultation process following a fresh risk assessment.
In response, Hammond said it was wrong for his shadow to suggest the process is "driven by the need to save costs only".
He added: "The fact is that the current structure of the Coastguard does not reflect the technology and the concept of operations that is current today and we have to reinforce the ability to share work around the system to deal with fluctuations in workload between different parts of our coastline."
The transport secretary said a further risk assessment on new proposals would be published within the next week.
Sheryll Murray (Con, SE Cornwall), whose trawlerman husband died in a fishing accident earlier this year, said: "I didn't hear an awful lot about safety in your statement, I heard an awful lot about cost."
She pressed the minister on why a risk assessment into the proposals had not already been published.
Hammond told her: "I understand your specific local concerns and you have campaigned extremely hard on behalf of your local community.
"Of course, safety is paramount and this whole process is about making the Coastguard service more resilient, more effective, creating a proper career structure which will attract and retain the quality of people that we need in a service - which frankly has not had a good experience over the last few years in terms of industrial relations and personnel issues."
Sir Menzies Campbell (Lib Dem, North East Fife) said the proposed closure of Forth in his constituency will be received with "profound disappointment" and that the decision to keep Aberdeen open, is the most expensive station in the UK.
Hammond accepted that such questions were likely to be raised by MPs and pledged that he would look in to the decision made on the Forth station.
He added: "There was a multi-criteria approach into looking at the decision around which station in each pair should be retained."
Steve Rotherham (Lab, Walton) hit out at plans to close the Liverpool coastguard station.
"What a surprise. Faced with a choice, a Tory minister decides to close a facility in Liverpool," he said.
"I genuinely don't believe for a moment that the closure of the Liverpool Coastguard station was done for anything other than political expediency."
In response, the minister told him: "To suggest that there's some kind of party political advantage is not just shameful, it's also illiterate. Look at the map."
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