Introduction

The Code was made mandatory by resolution MSC.47(66) under SOLAS regulation III/3.10, whereby regulation III/34 determines that all life-saving appliances and arrangements shall comply with its requirements. The Code entered into force on 1 July 1998 and since then has been amended in accordance with SOLAS Article VIII as follows:
.1 by the May 2006 amendments, which were adopted by resolution MSC.207(81) and will enter into force on 1 July 2010;
.2 by the December 2006 amendments, which were adopted by resolution MSC.218(82) and entered into force on 1 July 2008; and
.3 by the 2008 amendments, which were adopted by resolution MSC.272(85) and will enter into force on 1 July 2010.
The consolidated text of the LSA Code in the present publication incorporates the above three sets of amendments, including the two sets entering into force on 1 July 2010, since they were deemed to have been accepted, in accordance with the SOLAS amendment procedures, on 1 January 2010 and will therefore automatically enter into force on 1 July 2010.
Recommendations on the testing of life-saving appliances were first adopted by the IMO Assembly in 1991, by resolution A.689(17). In 1998 the MSC, recognizing the need to introduce more precise requirements for the testing of life-saving appliances and recalling that it had amended the recommendations on several occasions since their adoption, adopted the Revised Recommendation on Testing of Life-saving Appliances (resolution MSC.81(70)), effectively replacing resolution A.689(17). Since then, the Revised Recommendation has again been amended several times, in the main corresponding to the associated amendments to the LSA Code described above, and the present publication contains the consolidated text including the amendments adopted by MSC 80 (resolution MSC.200(80)), MSC 82 (resolution MSC.226(82)) and MSC 85 (resolution MSC.274(85)).
The Code of practice for the evaluation, testing and acceptance of prototype novel life-saving appliances and arrangements, adopted by the Assembly in 1983 by resolution A.520(13), is intended to cater for prototype novel life-saving appliances and arrangements which may be developed and do not fully meet the requirements of chapter III of the 1974 SOLAS Convention but provide the same or higher safety standards.