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.
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| 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!
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