CAP 660: WHO IS LYING?

One of the various criticisms aimed at the joint Civil Aviation Authority-British Parachute Association code of practice known as CAP 660 is that the CAA rushed the new fifth edition into print early in 2020 without respecting its own review and assessment procedures.

Critics say that the CAP 660 v5 was not subjected to a full stakeholder impact assessment. Responding to a Freedom of Information request about these concerns in February 2020, the CAA stated:

"Various internal CAA and cross-Government stakeholders (such as the Department for Transport) were consulted prior to the public consultation. The external stakeholder consulted was British Skydiving, the parachuting sector’s only Approved Organisation at this time. A wide range of input from has been received during the public consultation period.". 

 

British Skydiving is the trading name of British Parachute Association Ltd (BPA), whom critics accuse of running an illegal commercial monopoly of parachuting in the United Kingdom, aided and abetted in various ways by the CAA.

 

BPA Watch wrote to CAA Legal Director Kate Staples on July 10th 2021 to ask if her legal department had reviewed CAP 660.

From: BPA Watch <bpawatch@gmail.com>
Sent: 10 July 2021 16:24
To: Kate Staples <Kate.Staples@caa.co.uk>
Cc: BPA Watch <bpawatch@gmail.com>
Subject: CAP 660 Review

Dear Ms Staples,

Please could you confirm that your legal department reviewed the fifth edition of the CAP 660 code of practice published by the CAA in 2020?

Yours sincerely,

Don

Kate Staples replied:

From: Kate Staples <Kate.Staples@caa.co.uk>
Date: Fri, 16 Jul 2021 at 10:33
Subject: RE: CAP 660 Review
To: BPA Watch <bpawatch@gmail.com>

Thank you for your email.

I can confirm that CAP 660 was reviewed by my team.

Yours sincerely

Kate Staples General Counsel and Secretary to the Civil Aviation Authority Tel: 0330 138 3053 My pronouns are: she/her BPA Watch then sent Kate Staples an FOI request for a copy of her department's review of CAP 660.

From: BPA Watch <bpawatch@gmail.com>
Sent: Tuesday, July 20, 2021 10:42:09 AM
To: Kate Staples <Kate.Staples@caa.co.uk>
Subject: Re: CAP 660 Review

 

Dear Ms Staples,

Thank you for your reply of July 16th 2021. It is reassuring to learn that your legal team reviewed CAP 660. I am therefore lodging a Freedom of Information request with you for a copy of this legal review of CAP 660, together with the compliance assurance that the development process respected the legal requirements relating to Impact Assessment and a suitable and sufficient stakeholder consultation process.

Regards,

Don Canard

BPA Watch

Instead of simply sending us the documents we requested or having a member of her legal department do so, Kate Staples referred our FOI request to a "central team".

From: Kate Staples <Kate.Staples@caa.co.uk>
Date: Tue, 20 Jul 2021 at 12:24
Subject: Re: CAP 660 Review
To: BPA Watch <bpawatch@gmail.com>

Thank you for your email.

I will pass your request through to the central team that will coordinate a response.

Yours sincerely

Kate Staples

A year and a half before, the CAA response to a previous FOI request about the review processes pertaining to CAP 660 had stated:

 

"In the process of updating and amending the CAP [the author] has engaged with the key stakeholders and has led the public consultation process and the review of the responses that this has now garnered. Prior to its release, CAP 660 will be reviewed and, once ready for publication, signed off by a senior manager.".

 

But the CAA had not engaged with all of the "key stakeholders". The CAA had, it seems, confined its impact assessment to the BPA and the Department for Transport (DfT). BPA Ltd pays the CAA £30,000 per annum for the Approved Person status facilitating its commercial monopoly on parachuting in the UK.

 

The truth was hidden in plain sight in the first paragraph of Page 2 of the the CAA response to the FOI request, reproduced in full below. The author of the FOI response admitted: "As no major technical or procedural changes have been introduced, an initial impact assessment of the 5th Edition has not been conducted...".

BPA Watch has also seen evidence that the CAA failed to heed warnings during the public consultation process that CAP 660 was not compliant with the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974. There is no evidence that the Heath and Safety Executive was consulted about CAP 660 v5. 

According to law –– the Air Navigation Order –– the CAA's responsibility for parachutists ends as soon as parachutists exit and clear an aircraft in flight. At this point, the HSE takes over. In order words, it is the HSE and not the CAA that is the Enforcing Authority in relation to parachuting. At the very least, the CAA is guilty of regulatory overreach.

 

Indeed, as BPA Watch has previously noted, CAP 660 v5 is seen by some critics as codifying evasion by the CAA's delegated regulator BPA Ltd of Heath and Safety Executive (HSE) oversight and regulation.The BPA's COO Tony Butler recently wrote that HSE involvement in skydiving would be "a danger". 

Did Mr Butler, who told a coroner's court in March 2005 that he had "investigated sixty deaths in the UK", mean that HSE oversight would make the sport more dangerous? Or did he mean that it was "a danger" from the viewpoint of BPA Ltd, whose officials might have to take pay cuts to finance any significant increase in safety-related spending by BPA Ltd?

Some observers noted that the revised fifth edition of CAP 660 seemed to be paving the way for BPA interference in military parachuting per se, thereby raising questions regarding national security and a possible risk to the operational readiness and effectiveness of Britain's Airborne and Special Forces.

 

Media reports that the investigation into the recent skydiving-related death at RAF Weston-on-the-Green  of Royal Air Force Sergeant Rachel Fisk of No 1 Parachute Training School is being led by BPA Ltd had observers wondering why this civilian amateur sports association is involved in investigating the death of an RAF NCO on an RAF air base. 

Sgt Fisk joins the growing list of skydiving-related fatalities –– that we know about –– under the BPA monopoly, which is aided and abetted by the CAA. The numerous life-changing injuries suffered by skydivers every year should not be forgotten either.

CAP 660 has been described as an exercise in evasion of Health and Safety regulation by the BPA trading as British Skydiving, an evasion aided and abetted by the CAA. The BPA spends no more than £5,000 per year on safety, which might explain the high death and injury toll on its watch. 

Just under four hours after Kate Staples' response to BPA Watch's FOI request for proof of her assertion that the revised CAP 660 had been reviewed by her legal team,  the CAA's Information Rights Manager Leon Mitchell wrote to us. Mr Mitchell was not the same Information Rights Manager who had written the FOI response of 10.2.2021.

From: FOI Requests <FOI.Requests@caa.co.uk> Date: Tue, 20 Jul 2021 at 16:14 Subject: Your Request To: bpawatch@gmail.com <bpawatch@gmail.com> Dear Mr Canard, I am writing to acknowledge receipt of your application for the release of information held by the Civil Aviation Authority. If your requirements are unclear, or the information is held by another public authority, we will contact you in the next five working days.  Otherwise the information we are able to disclose will be assembled and made available to you within 20 working days from receipt of your request.  If we are unable to provide any of the information requested an explanation will be provided. Should you wish to discuss any aspect of this request please do not hesitate to contact us.  Please quote reference F0005357. Yours sincerely Leon Mitchell Information Rights Manager Communications Department Civil Aviation Authority Follow us on Twitter: @UK_CAA BPA Watch

BPA Watch acknowledged Mr Mitchell's email.

From: BPA Watch <bpawatch@gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 20 Jul 2021 at 19:48
Subject: Re: Your Request
To: FOI Requests <FOI.Requests@caa.co.uk>

Dear Mr Mitchell,

Ref: F0005357

Thank you for your acknowledgement of my FOI request. I doubt that the documents I have requested from CAA legal counsel Kate Staples is held by another public authority and I believe my request was quite clear.

Yours sincerely,

Don Canard

Almost a month passed before BPA Watch received the following email and attachment from CAA External Response Manager Mark Stevens.

From: FOI Requests <FOI.Requests@caa.co.uk>
Date: Tue, 17 Aug 2021 at 12:17
Subject: FOI request to the CAA
To: bpawatch@gmail.com <bpawatch@gmail.com>

Dear Mr Canard

Please find attached the CAA’s response to your request for information.

 Kind regards

Mark Stevens External Response Manager Communications Department Civil Aviation Authority   Any neutral observer reading Mr Stevens' letter might wonder how public interest would be served in refusal to comply with our request to Kate Staples for proof of her assurance that the CAA legal department had conducted the requisite reviews of CAP 660.  Given the high death and injury toll over which the CAA-BPA cartel has presided since 1996, it is certainly in the public interest to know why the CAA rushed CAP 660 v5 into print despite concerns that it was not Health and Safety-compliant. We responded to Mark Stevens' email and letter. From: BPA Watch <bpawatch@gmail.com> Date: Mon, 23 Aug 2021 at 07:37 Subject: Re: FOI request to the CAA To: FOI Requests <FOI.Requests@caa.co.uk> Cc: <stephen.hillier@caa.co.uk>, <richard.moriarty@caa.co.uk>, Kate Staples <kate.staples@caa.co.uk>, Rob Bishton <Rob.Bishton@caa.co.uk> Dear Mr Stevens, Thank you for your reply. The citing of legal privilege as grounds for refusing to confirm that the CAA followed due process in relation to CAP 660 looks highly dubious in the light of the ministerial-level complaint recently lodged against your quango by a veterans parachute display team, a complaint that quotes correspondence between Rob Bishton and myself and which has been raised with the CAA by the current Aviation Minister's office. The complaint contends amongst other things, that the CAA misled a previous Aviation Minister about the Pegasus Display Team. I will therefore give you and your superiors a second chance to comply with my FOI request. Yours sincerely, Don Canard We received a response to the effect that the CAA would instigate an internal review of our FOI request. On 1.9.2021, the CAA's Head of Analysis and Insights wrote to BPA Watch. From: Kit Beynon <Kit.Beynon@caa.co.uk> Date: Wed, 1 Sept 2021 at 12:12 Subject: CAA FOI Internal Review Acknowledgement To: bpawatch@gmail.com <bpawatch@gmail.com> Dear Mr Canard, Please find attached formal confirmation of the internal review of your FOI request made to the CAA. Kind regards, Kit Beynon Kit Beynon Head of Analysis & Insights

From: Kit Beynon <Kit.Beynon@caa.co.uk>
Date: Tue, 14 Sept 2021 at 10:18
Subject: CAA FOI Internal Review Decision
To: bpawatch@gmail.com <bpawatch@gmail.com>

Good morning Mr Canard,

Please see attached the decision letter relating to the appeal of FOI0005357,

Kind regards,

Kit Beynon

Kit Beynon Head of Analysis & Insights Consumers & Markets Group Civil Aviation Authority

CONCLUSIONS

Questioned about the due processes to which CAP 660 v5 should have been subjected, CAA Legal Director Kate Staples assured us that her legal department had reviewed CAP 660. 

If this were so, then the CAA's legal department permitted the publication of a code of practice that failed to comply with various laws, including The Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 and, moreover, facilitated BPA evasion of HSE oversight and regulation.

Asked to prove her assertion, Ms Staples passed the matter over to the CAA's data protection guard dogs, who then cited legal privilege and "public interest" to fob BPA Watch off.

It would appear that the CAA had forgotten its response to that earlier FOI request in February 2020. As the old maxim goes, liars need long memories. 

Small wonder that Transport Minister Grant Shapps is setting up an external complaints review body to handle the growing anger within and without the aviation industry about the CAA quango, which is widely seen as totally out of control.

However, the CAA has indicated that Mr Shapps' Department of Transport was consulted about CAP 660 v5, suggesting that while the CAA and the BPA concocted CAP 660 v5, the CAA's ministerial masters approved it.