Open Letter to the UK CAA – sUAS News

Dear Mr Bishton,

Do I have dementia? I ask because on Friday the 13th the RPAS team failed to renew my company’s Operational Authorisation for Drone Light Shows, owing to a finding, in which they claimed, “We do not have assurance that you are of suitable competence to hold the role of Accountable Manager”. Now, as this was the second renewal of this Operational Authorisation and they had no concerns regarding my competence on previous renewals, either they were incompetent to issue me with Operational Authorisation in the first place, or I have developed a nuero degenerative disease over the last 12 months without my noticing.

The RPAS unit have apparent concerns over my competency as they claim that I have not provided them with flight details for the Morecambe Bay Medical Shuttle, one of the 17 Future Flight Challenge Phase 3 projects that the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund paid the CAA millions to support, but in our case, because I previously submitted a complaint (22/167) you did not support.

On August 10th 2023, Piers Gow from RPAS, rather than exhibiting any professional courtesy by contacting a member of Electric Aviation Limited, called our NHS partner’s switchboard and asked to speak to the “Drone project manager”. A letter threatening “escalation” followed based on the incorrect assumptions Mr Gow had made about our flights, whilst talking to a clinician with no experience of operating drones. This was “Tortious Interference” and had the effect of terminating all flights from the Hospitals around Morecambe Bay. On the 17th of August, 2023, our lawyers wrote to the Office of General Counsel asking for an explanation as to Mr Gow’s actions and mentioned that the CAA may have breached section 23 of the Civil Aviation Act. During this letter it was mooted that I “may be subject to negative treatment by the CAA”. 484 days later, our lawyers are still awaiting a formal response.

The Morecambe Bay project closed in March 2024 and following the publication of the DfT’s Future Flight Action plan, we took the decision to close Electric Aviation Limited, as there was no means to provide any form of commercial service for another three years, owing to the CAA’s outstanding pace of innovation. On the 5th of April 2024, Callum Holland (RPAS Sector Lead) emailed me stating, “Myself and Kevin would like to have an informal conversation with you to talk about your ambitions in this space.” I responded fully and answered any questions that the Head of RPAS and the Sector Lead may have had about our Morecambe Bay operations. On the 17th of June, 2024, we made the voluntary application at Companies House to strike Electric Aviation Limited off and accordingly the company was struck off the register on the 3rd of September.

On the 5th of September 2024, Philip Lockey (also claiming to be RPAS Sector Lead) sent an email to my personal email address requesting for Specific Category operations, Flight logs, Incident logs, Site Surveys and Aircraft Telemetry. This is ironic, as there were no flights during the time period requested, owing to the tortious interference, by the RPAS team in August 2023, that had halted Specific category flights. We commenced a complaint for the use of my personal email address, as surely the correct form would have been to email the address provided on the PDRA01 certificate for Specific category operations? More importantly our legal counsel wrote to the RPAS team and OGC, informed them that all communications must be routed through their office and that the company no longer existed. Sadly and discourtesly, to this date, yet again, no response has been recived.

Despite receiving legal counsel notification, RPAS continued to send emails to my personal address. A follow up was received on the 10th of October and on the 17th of October 2024, Mr Lockey, this time informed us: “that failure to provide access to an authorised person in accordance with UAS.SPEC.090 is a criminal offence liable to prosecution under the Air Navigation Order 2016 and should you fail to provide me access to said documents the CAA may consider prosecuting you for this offence.” His use of the words “provide me” suggests that Mr Lockey is writing under his personal motivation, receiving no legal guidance and that perhaps RPAS threaten Criminal Prosecution, without, ironically, following any form of Standard Operating Proceedure.

Part 37 of the Companies Act 2006, section 1140, “Service of documents on directors, secretaries and others”, clearly states in paragraph 1: “A document may be served on a person to whom this section applies by leaving it at, or sending it by post to, the person’s registered address.” No provision is given for the service of documents by sending requests to directors’ personal email addresses. On the 7th of November, Kevin Woolsey, Head of RPAS, once again, breached professional etiquette and sent to my personal email, cc-ing in our legal counsel, a letter which confirmed that the CAA were not prosecuting me under Article 265A (3) & (6)(d)(vii) of the Air Navigation Order 2016. He continued: “Your failure to provide access to the requested material fails to assure the CAA that you are an accountable person. This approach of failing to engage with the regulator in meeting one’s statutory requirements within the UAS framework leaves a question over whether the CAA can satisfy itself that it’s Article 12 of UK Regulation (EU) 2019/947 obligations can be met nor whether any future operations will be fully complied with.”

Firstly, there were no qualifying flights in the time period requested. Next, technically the requests were never made, and finally, our legal counsel wrote to Kevin’s team informing them how to engage with us, which they failed to do. Kevin now believes that I am not “of suitable competence to hold the role of Accountable Manager” for a totally separate and unconnected legal entity, Electric Airshows Limited. This has the effect that my company will have to cancel shows and commercially let customers down and as such our position is reserved.

On Friday 13th December, my lawyers issued notice that we require a review under Regulation 6 of the RPAS decision making process. We request that the Regulation 6 hearing be made public and live streamed.

I completely understand the need for effective regulation, especially on a new and upcoming, technically advanced industry sectors such as UAS, but the lack of professionalism shown by the RPAS unit leaves me with grave concerns. The behaviour of the CAA, since my complaint back in 2022 has lead me to question if article 1(3)(c) of the Protection from Harassment Act 1997 has been breached.

Please could you ask that OGC provide full responses to all overdue legal correspondence, and in light of all of the above, could you confirm that you believe Kevin, is in fact, an Accountable Manager?

Finally, could you please ask your staff to learn how to spell Morecambe.

With the compliments of the season.

Dr Chris Crockford.

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