Network Rail Capitulates; BMFA Bigs it Up!

Within 24 hours of receiving my Freedom of Information request about their 'get-tough' assertions about laws governing drones, Network Rail has apologised for issuing "incorrect" information.

This was the false information (click to enlarge)...                    

 ...and this was the retraction:

I feel rather sorry for the response team member who issued the false legal information and then had to apologise, because it is almost certain that he was acting under the instructions of others, probably more senior to him.

Nevertheless, the false information given to me by e-mail was a formal response on behalf of Network Rail and so who exactly issued it is not very relevant. 

The real question to ask NR, as so many organisations like it, is why it was issued as a formal response at all?

A few minutes later, by coincidence, I received a rather surprising response from the BMFA Drone section's officer, Chris Bradbury to my raising of the accuracy of "legal" information about drones published by numerous UK organisations. The recipient was the CAA, but I had copied in, for the usual reasons of information and courtesy, the Chair of the All-Parliamentary Party Group on Aviation, the Transport Minister and the BMFA:

 

The overall tone and content of the BMFA e-mail was to be entirely contrary to my own evidence to the CAA and Parliament. I'm not at all sure why this came about, especially as part of my evidence is personal, direct e-mails from various organisations, including the NT and Network Rail's admission of issuing false legal information, issued just a few minutes earlier - matters that the BMFA and Mr. Bradbury of course didn't even know existed, because they hadn't asked to see it.

I didn't raise any of the issues, such as having regard to laws other than purely aviation laws, that Mr. Bradbury ventures into of other aspects of flight, because the specific underlying concern I have raised is with the specious claim that NT (and others) can "authorise" - and thus, by obvious logical implication - prohibit overflight and the further specious claim that this stance is supported by the CAA and the legislative framework they operate under.

I also didn't raise the matter of Mr.Bradbury's personal experiences as to any information given to him by the NT (which he seems to have focused upon in his email, following his search for "drone", as he indicates); my contact with the CAA was clearly only about the evidence I had - which happens to be, but only in part, online material published for the general public.

Mr. Bradbury added his own authority in these matters: he is a "commercial drone pilot". I wasn't much impressed; I countered I am in my third decade as commander (if he wants the correct Chicago Convention 1944 terminology, for bigging-up effect) of manned aircraft and had a 95% pass in the CAA aviation law exam which forms part of the basis of flight crew training. I don't believe Mr. Bradbury has ever taken, let alone passed such an exam.

For some reason, Mr. Bradbury seems to have missed the point that my correspondence was about my experiences, not his. I have every right to advance my point of view. Bradbury read very much as though he and/or the BMFA thought contact with the CAA is not for the little people to concern themselves with. Which would be interesting, if true.

Bradbury, if he was in any way unclear as to what my specific claims actually were and the evidence I had already indicated to the CAA I held (see penultimate paragraph of the representation text) and was willing to share at a later, appropriate time, then he certainly made no effort to ask me. I tried to keep the correspondence as brief as possible; Bradbury just waded-in and turned the whole thing into an embarrassing mess.

Even more oddly, Bradbury says that "no BMFA response as such" was required - after he had issued a response using the BMFA email address - which any reasonable person would receive as an official, BMFA response, not a personal set of views. He is, after all, listed as a "staff" member on the BMFA web site.

It would seem Bradbury replied without consulting anyone at all about its content and may have hit 'reply all' without doing an awful lot of thinking first. Did he intend to hit 'reply all'?  I don't know. But hit it he did, and he's now had several days to apologise, if it was a mistake on his part.

Given Bradbury's position, his could never therefore have been an official response and because of this, not to mention his approach, he and the BMFA have been cut-off entirely from my correspondence. They couldn't reasonably expect anything else.

The difficulty for Chris Bradbury and the BMFA he was (yet suggests he was not) representing, is that the words he quotes from the NT 'policy' published online is a partial and incomplete - or simply insufficiently careful - reading of it.

Because the BMFA has either overlooked or didn't want to much notice the word "over" in the NT's published material, below (see 'Drone flying by members of the general public') is the full version, with the part that both I and the UK Defence Journal have highlighted claims, even after an admission by the NT that it is wrong, that drone flight can be prohibited over NT property via byelaws. For that to hold as correct which, remember, they have already admitted it isn't, then the NT would have to own and control the airspace. They do not. 

Bradbury thinks the NT is correct. I don't - and neither does the UK Defence Journal (extract from reportage of 22/09/2024).

 

Notice also (extract, below) that the NT claims that their prohibition on drone flying applies over their land - the sole condition mentioned in the first highlighted parts; it does not mention 'from' land at all at this stage  - through the mechanism of byelaws is "in accordance with" CAA regulations. But, of course, a blanket ban on overflight of NT lands is not at all in accordance with those regulations and is, rather, entirely at odds with them. Byelaws can, of course, restrict launch and recovery of drones from land; I've never argued against or claimed that is not the case, not least as that element is not covered by aviation law.

The NT is not the only organisation to try and add specious authority to their false claims through mentioning the CAA which, in my view, is something they really shouldn't be doing. The only correct way to mention the CAA in this regard is to purely and only direct the reader to the relevant CAA drone pages, not reinvent the wheel as a square on organisations' own sites. 

The reason organisations do reinvent the wheel is because they are trying to oppress the public by mirespresenting the law. Any examination of 'audit' videos, regardless of what you think of those, will show this to be so, often with NT staff appearing wholly ignorant in their sometimes rude defence of the NT's 'policies'.

The only time Mr. Bradbury mentions the "over" part is briefly at the end of his email, but he still doesn't accept that the way the NT use the word is, in most parts of that text, entirely false insofar as the law governing drone overflight is concerned, because he is clear that all of it, at all times, is fully correct; of that, there can be no doubt from his rather patronising email.

 

I protested to Mr. Bradbury in very clear terms, to which he responded with an admission that he hadn't seen my evidence and, he claims, hadn't suggested or stated what I was claiming was false. Well, his email certainly reads as though it set about - and rather rashly - demolishing my claims without even asking for my evidence, let alone seeing it and by claiming information online which is clearly wrong is, in his view, entirely right. Bradbury didn't, however, jocundly send his response to all recipients of his earlier challenge to my claims. I wonder why?

Apart from the private business relationship with the NT enjoyed by Mr. Bradbury - which may or may not have influenced his view of their legal statements as customers of his - there are questions to ask the BMFA's drone section as to whether they, as a representative organisation, have tried to push back against the increasing tendency of organisations to make false claims about the law and the attendant false authority they try to derive by claiming the CAA supports their stance. The answer is, almost certainly, 'no', not least because Mr. Bradbury is clearly of the firm view, despite the evidence to the contrary, that the online information from all the organisations I mentioned is correct.

After his knee-jerk reaction, Bradbury has refused to issue an apology and the BMFA, which was sent a copy of the points covered here to be issued by me in response to events, has also refused to answer. All very cowardly, given how quickly Bradbury rushed to issue his views to so many rather important and, no doubt, not-very-impressed recipients.

As to the NT's assertion that they "do not usually authorise personal drone flying on" its land, the reality emerging from recent personal e-mails with the NT is that they might never authorise such flights, even when they have a wider public interest. That's because I asked for consent, more out of curiosity than any regard for the NT, to capture some very remote archaeological features in mountainous terrain. It wasn't commercial because it was entirely voluntary activity and I explained the images were primarily for my own use but also, as an useful spin-off, published online (for free) for educational purposes via a Royal Commission website. The NT simply refused, point-blank, ramming home the 'trespass and nuisance' possibility (in an area where hardly anybody ever goes, especially in winter). They even explained the refusal was because it wasn't worth their while, confirming the view of many (and plenty of evidence from 'audit' videos) that this is all about money. I think the NT's attitude really stinks.

The only other thing to note, which I think should be highlighted by the NT and others as the starting position, before they simply don't mention it at all and launch into discussion of nuisance and trespass, is that s76(1), Civil Aviation Act 1982 is clear that flight over land shall never, in and of itself (and thus ignoring any other laws that may apply), constitute nuisance or trespass, provided all other aviation laws are being complied with and that you fly in a reasonable manner, all things considered.

All in all, quite a busy week on the drone law path!

 

Network Rail: The Latest Purveyor of Nonsense

A few weeks ago, I was out on my motorbike around Holyhead, doing a bit of capturing ships by drone. 

On the way home, I decided to capture a beautiful red brick water tower that once supplied steam trains on the main railway line. Despite being a fairly rare surviving example, remarkably, this structure hadn't ever been entered onto the official databases of historical structures. As a volunteer with the Royal Commission on Ancient and Historical Monuments in Wales, I was easily able to do something about this and it now has an entry.

 

Having caught some nice external images, I wondered if Network Rail might allow me to take a few basic photos from inside. The building isn't listed and so it always stands at risk of damage or even demolition; some smaller water tanks were removed about ten years ago, so the risk is real.

Inevitably, NR wouldn't grant permission, even for this public-interest documenting, because access can only be provided via the track. I'm sure it's quite easy to arrange safe access, but we won't get into all that stuff.

The response team at NR then proceeded to add a little ditty to their email, which sounded more than a little like a warning about flying drones over an "operational railway"; here's the relevant extract (click to enlarge):

This is clearly a load of rubbish and it led to me immediately firing-off a Freedom of Information Act request for NR to identify the legislative provision on which they were relying in making this astonishing assertion. Their response is awaited.

Curiously, on looking at NR's website that covers drones, a very different and correct version of reality is presented, even if it's still rather officiously-worded in an attempt to dissuade drone flight. But at least it isn't lying about the law:

Here, NR explicitly accepts, as will be abundantly clear to most diligent drone pilots, that they "do not own or manage the airspace above the railway". 

The reality is, of course, like so many other organisations across the UK, that NR really wish they did own and manage that airspace above their property, but in almost all cases, have no chance whatsoever of ever doing that. Instead, they mislead the public through specious interpretations of the law and even blatant misrepresentations of it in the hope that people will be intimidated into compliance.

For me, this was the last straw. I decided to make a representation to the CAA, the All Party Parliamentary Group on Aviation in Parliament, the Secretary of State for Transport and the UK Drone Flyers' Association:

"Promulgation of false legal information - aviation (UAV).

Dear Sir/Madam,

I wish to make a representation of concern over the increasingly-common and often deliberate misrepresentation by many organisations and public authorities of the legal position in relation to UAVs.

So far this year alone, I have received such false legal information from the National Trust, The Crown Estate, the RSPB, Natural Resources Wales and Network Rail. In most cases, these organisations claim that their legal information/stance is provided and supported by the CAA. Some are arms-length governmental organisations with a particular public duty of accountability and accuracy.

Whilst organisations may to some, limited extent legitimately seek to dissuade any given local, individual drone flight through engagement, they must not, in an accountable democracy, be permitted to mislead the public, wholesale, through cynical deployment of false information about the law in relation to UAV.

All this is creating a worrying subculture of belief and action hostile to legitimate flights undertaken by responsible UAV operators. It also serves to undermine the CAA insofar as the public are encouraged to pay regard to organisations other than the recognised regulatory authority. The UK must be careful not to encourage 'organisational vigilantism' in relation to aviation law.

I am of the view that the CAA ought to remind and warn all public authorities that the correct presentation of the law in relation to aviation, including UAVs, is that given by the recognised regulatory body. Authorities and organisations other than the CAA should and must not attempt to interpret complex aviation law for themselves, typically leading to serious errors, nor mislead and dissuade the public by presenting the law as that which it is not.

For clarity, I am an A2CoC drone pilot and private pilot of fixed-wing SEP of 23 years' standing and so no part of this communication should be understood as anything other than supporting the statutory position as properly made by Parliament and the CAA.

I would be happy to provide such evidence as is reasonably required in relation to my claims, noting that the National Trust, in particular but by no means exclusively, is a persistent and rabid offender in this regard, despite having been forced to admit it does not control airspace under a 2024 FoIA 2000 request.

All personal data is provided under the terms of UK GDPR/DPA 2018 and not consented for onward transmission except where lawfully justifiable."

 

 

BMFA - Member, or Not?

I'm not in any sense an active member of the BMFA and its sidekick, the British Drone Flyers element. For a start, I don't see an awful lot of lobbying going on to secure better privileges for BDF members in an increasingly drone-hostile regulatory environment, led by the CAA.

But I am, nevertheless, a paid-up member of BMFA/BDF because, like so many, I find the £25 million public liability insurance provided in exchange for the £49 annual membership a reasonable offering.

So, as a member, the BDF newsletter came through to my inbox a couple of days ago. It had little content beyond some pretty drone images and competition results in the same vein. 

At the end of the newsletter - which I would reasonably think is only sent to current members - a link was provided for anyone who wanted to submit up to three images for inclusion in a future newsletter and entry into the next competition.

So, I did just that. Not that I take such things seriously.

Mountain dam and access road in north Wales. One of my submissions to the BMFA/BDF competition that didn't quite work out as it was meant to. (C) This blog's author.

 

A few minutes later, my inbox pinged that I had a new email from the BMFA. It thanked me for my submission and reminded me that I had permitted, via the submission process, the  BMFA to use my images in, essentially, PR material, as indeed I had.

I was then told that my images couldn't be entered into the competition because I am not a member! Which is all very odd, because I have an email receipt and membership confirmation from March 28th this year - less than two months ago.

I suppose this merely indicates that the process of data updating within BMFA isn't very efficient. Even so, this assertion that BMFA could use my images as a non-member for their own purposes, yet not allow my entry into their competition, wasn't exactly my recollection of the agreement made at the point of submission. That agreement was on the basis of an offer and thus the attendant expectations surrounding entry into a competition as a member - which I am.

Quite why the BMFA system doesn't simply check entrants' membership number before proceeding to the entry stage for the competition is anyone's guess. Accepting the images and only later rejecting entry is a very arse-about-face way to go about things and doesn't foster good relations.