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| Sarah Albon aka Annie Pub Singer |
Mrs Albon's husband Stuart or Stu Albon remains a BS senior instructor to this day. Stu Albon, who described himself as a "Former Camouflaged Messenger of Death" from 1984 to 1998 on his CV is a British Army veteran who served in Afghanistan as a Blanket Stacker, telling anyone who stood still long enough that he had been a Captain in the Special Air Service. In truth, he served with the Royal Logistic Corps. None of BPA Watch's SAS contacts, who include long-serving officers, had ever met the Former Camouflaged Messenger of Death during their service. Mrs Albon had a nickname too: "Annie the Pub Singer". The couple reside in one of the most expensive villages in Kent. Readers might be wondering why all of this is relevant. Read on...
Other articles by BPA Watch have looked at the relationship between BPA/BS and the CAA, which could fairly be described as aiding and abetting BS in its establishment of a monopoly over civilian skydiving in the UK. This monopoly has allowed BS to impose a further monopoly over the growing and very lucrative leisure time activity of tandem skydiving, whereby thrill-seekers pay to leap from aircraft attached to skydiving instructors.
This monopoly takes the form of a franchise operation through which skydiving centers pay annual fees to BS in return for which they can operate. Any skydiving or parachuting club or body that declines to pay these fees — and to buy expensive but useless BS insurance — is illegally refused parachuting permissions by the CAA, which falsely represents itself as UK parachuting national regulator. The national regulator is actually the Health and Safety Executive (HSE).
The CAA stepped into the vacuum created by the HSE's failure to assume its responsibilities for decades, during which the CAA and BS have presided over a shocking toll of deaths and life-changing injuries in the skydiving sector. In fairness, the HSE has now admitted its role as national regulator with regard to parachuting albeit very reluctantly. What could be the reason for this reluctance? Is the HSE worried about lawsuits from bereaved and cripped litigants over the lack of HSE regulation in skydiving?
BPA-BS and the CAA jointly published a document entitled CAP 660 that they hold up as some sort of official regulation. CAP 660 has been described as a coded exercise in evasion of the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974. Any parachuting body or individual who refuses to break the law by working to CAP 660 is penalised and cannot function in the UK.
British Skydiving has managed to persuade some armed forces commands that CAP 660 is law, with the probable help of the retired senior RAF staff officers employed by the CAA. The death of Sgt Fisk is one of the consequences.
Senior BPA-BS officials have openly incited franchisees to evade Health and Safety law and have, in writing, described HSE regulation of skydiving as a "danger". They have sometimes suggested that BPA-BS and its affiliated parachute training organisations are exempt from Health and Safety law because they are not 'at work'; they are engaging in a leisuretime sporting activity. Some of this nonsense is addressed in this article by Don Canard.
In 2020, BS also published an article, which is no longer visible, on its website claiming to have signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the HSE over regulation (or total non-regulation) of its franchise operations. Nobody at the HSE had ever heard of this MOU. However, BPA Watch did not put the question to HSE CEO Sarah Albon because we knew nothing of Mrs Albon's personal and familial links to this serially lawbreaking company.
In the wake of the debacle of the Rachel Fisk Inquiry and under pressure from interested parties, the HSE admitted that it was indeed responsible for regulating skydiving and its various service providers, who are all British Skydiving franchisees, like the skydiving centers, or instructors, like Stu Albon and, previously, his wife Sarah Albon. In October 2024, a senior HSE inspector wrote to newly-appointed BS CEO Robert Gibson.
Although civil in tone, the HSE letter told BS what various observers — and victims of BS bullying tactics — already know: BS had no official powers whatsoever, contrary to its claims to have been given regulatory powers by its protectors or accomplices in the CAA. At one point, the letter forbids BS to instigate inquiries into accidents unless authorised to do so by the CAA, the Local Authority or the Police. The weak link here concerns the Police, whom BS have succeeded in conning several times.
BS has ignored the HSE and has so far gotten away with its disobedience. Could this have anything to do with the fact that the HSE's CEO is one Sarah Albon, the former BPA-BS skydiving instructor who reportedly signed an NDA with the BPA in return for an out-of-court settlement for injuries and whose husband makes his living as a BPA-BS senior instructor. Surely not!
Fact-checking this worrying revelation, BPA Watch found a 2019 Financial Times article online that stated: "Britain's new health and safety chief knows all about managing risk: she used to be a skydiving instructor in her spare time.". There were no other easily accessible references to Mrs Albon's links to BPA-BS, which indicates that her online profile might have been professionally 'cleaned'. Nor did Mrs Albon disclose these personal and familial links upon taking up her new post as HSE CEO in 2019.
BPA Watch did find hard evidence, however, when checking secondary sources, in the form of references to Sarah Albon as a BPA instructor in the then BPA house magazine. If an Internet 'cleaner' was engaged to launder Sarah Albon's profile either by Mrs Albon herself or by her new employers the HSE, already under pressure over its abdication ot regulatory responsibility for skydiving, the cleaner failed to remove the Financial Times article and the scans of back issues of the BPA house magazine.
Sarah Albon's Government CV and HSE disclosures page did not include any references to British Parachute Association Ltd trading as British Skydiving or to her husband's connections with the firm.
BPA Watch, in line with its policy of giving free right of reply to everyone, wrote to Sarah Albon about her personal and familial connections to a a sports franchise firm whose evasion of Health and Safety law has killed and injured scores of people. Mrs Albon made no comment but we are reliably informed that the senior HSE inspector who wrote the stern letter to British Skydiving has been moved to another job.
Meanwhile, the refusal of BPA Ltd t/s BS and its franchises to obey Health and Safety law has just killed a mother of four whose partner paid for a tandem jump as a special treat. He and the couple's 9 year old son watched as she and her BS instructor fell to earth from 15,000 feet over Devon. The death toll rises.
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REACTIONS
[Since this was published, BPA Watch has been contacted by a Mr Alex Busby Hicks who wished to point out that Sarah and Stu Albon have been divorced for some years and that Stu Albon in employed as a fireman rather than a British Skydiving senior instructor.
Mr Busby Hicks made other statements and signed off as "A fat crap hat" [sicunt] but we have not reproduced these for his sake. Sources close to Mrs Albon's office say that they were warned about her undeclared relationship with British Skydiving in 2021 and that she was summoned to explain herself.
It
has been suggested that the marital estrangement described by Mr Busby
Hicks is a sham designed to protect Mrs Albon's career.
We have invited him to write us a short article from the viewpoint of a British Skydiving-affiliated Parachute Training Organisation owner or BS franchisee, explaining that Health and Safety law does not apply to BS franchisees because they are not at work.]
Mr Busby Hicks suggested on social media that the leading freefall parachutist Ian Marshall was behind the 'Roman Kandells' nom de plume before accusing Mark Briggs of being behind both the Roman Kandells and Don Canard pseudonyms. We wish they were writing for BPA Watch. However, we know them and they know us. Ian Marshall asked us to post this comment below the latest article.
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