HSE EXEMPTS BPA FROM H&S LAW?

BPA exempted from the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974?

Are HSE Memoranda of Understanding a legal paradox or simple stupidity?

By Bravo Three Zero CMIOSH

Editorial Foreword

In the third and final part of our series on the Rachel Fisk tragedy, we addressed many of the underlying failures that any investigation should consider. However, we did not explore the question of the Memoranda of Understanding (MOU) that the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) has drawn up with the Ministry of Defence (MOD), the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) and British Parachute Association Ltd trading as British Skydiving (BPA/BS).

As readers of this blog know, BPA Watch (BPAW) has questioned the legality of the CAA’s delegation of parachuting regulatory oversight to BPA/BS and not just because the CAA, as a quango rather than a Aviation Ministry, has no right to create other quangos as in this case, in effect, of BPA/BS. A study of the Law reveals that the CAA is not the parachuting Enforcing Authority and has delegated to BPA/BS regulatory powers that were not in the CAA’s gift to begin with. The HSE is the true parachuting Enforcing Authority. 

However, anyone who interpreted the HSE’s imposition upon the Royal Air Force (RAF) of a Crown Improvement Notice over the skydiving-related death of RAF Sgt Fisk as an indication that the HSE was finally assuming its legal obligations might be in for a rude disappointment. A reading of the various Memoranda of Understanding drawn up between the HSE and various parties suggests that the Crown Improvement Notice imposed on the RAF is not worth the paper upon which it is printed.

CAP1484 CAA/HSE/HSENI Memorandum of Understanding guidance

 

Readers wishing to familiarise themselves with the HSE’s MOU processes should begin by taking a look at the CAP 1484 CAA/HSE/HSENI Memorandum of Understandingguidance page on the CAA’s website. This document supports the CAA/HSE/HSENI MOU and explains in greater detail the enforcement responsibilities of each regulator and the interfaces between the organisations.

Sport parachuting - Liaison between HSE inspectors and the civil aviation authority (CAA)

OC 801/2 Supplement 1

MOD parachuting

This Supplement to OC 801/2 outlines the approach which should be adopted in relation to parachuting undertaken by MOD. The arrangements are different from those detailed in OC 801/2.

MEMORANDUM OF UNDERSTANDING BETWEEN THE MINISTRY OF DEFENCE AND THE HEALTH AND SAFETY EXECUTIVE

This Memorandum of Understanding –– known as the ‘General Agreement’ –– records an agreement between the MOD and the HSE in discharging their respective roles and responsibilities for regulation and enforcement of health and safety (H&S) legislation on the MOD estate and for MOD activities in Great Britain (GB).

To uninformed observers, these MOUs seem to represent a logical approach to parachuting regulation and seem to make reasonable legal argument in that MOD sports parachuting should be undertaken in accordance with the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974 and Regulations made thereunder.

Consequently, the issuing to the RAF by HM Inspector Emma Page of a HSE Improvement Notice for  Crown Employees on October 7^th 2021 makes complete sense. 

 

However, the MOD’s Joint Services Adventurous Training (JSAT) sports parachuting centres are required to affiliate to BPA/BS. This affiliation obliges the JSAT centres to operate in accordance with the BPA-BS Operations Manual. Thus the MOD has agreed to these contractual terms and paid BPA/BS the requisite fees in confirmation of this formal agreement.

As BPA Watch previously highlighted, Group Captain Mark Smith, Commandant of the RAF Robson Academy of Resilience at RAF Weston-on-the-Green, also confirmed this MOD-BPA/BS contract when he wrote: “RAF Weston on the Green, JSAT sports parachuting centre - operates under the auspices of British Skydiving - the National Governing Body (NGB) - who externally assure our parachuting activity.”.

Observers could be excused for wondering why the BPA/BA was not jointly named on HM Inspector Emma Page’s Crown Improvement Notice and why the Notice was addressed to Group Captain Smith’s deputy Wing Commander Tim Page –– who should engage good lawyers if he has not already done so. As BPAW’s Don Canard remarked of Page, he is being “done up like a kipper.”.

Wing Commander Page’s best defence might well consist of a legal argument that the HSE Crown Improvement Notice has no standing in Law because the contract between the MOD and BPA/BS is highly likely to negate the HSE-MOD MOU and any jurisdiction claimed by the HSE in relation to Sgt Fisk’s death.

As BPA Watch has previously reported, no BPA/BS officials seem able to produce any credible, government-issued, recognised or approved credentials qualifying them for any role in Health and Safety, accident prevention and investigation. The question must be asked: who were the HSE officials who approved the HSE-BPA/BS MOU without carrying out the prerequisite and necessary due diligence?

As one leading Parachute Training Organisation owner asked: “was the HSE acting to counter a proposal from within the CAA to deregulate skydiving, which would have confirmed the HSE as the regulator?”. Given that the HSE is actually the parachuting regulator, the question is moot but as long as the HSE continues to deny its obligations under the Law, the question remains an issue, especially with the rising toll of skydiving fatalities and life-changing injuries.

And then there is the HSE-BPA/BS MOU as described by BPA/BS Communications Manager Angel Fernandez in a news bulletin entitled ‘Why BritishSkydiving is so important to us all?’. 

Obviously, previous attempts by the HSE to exercise control over parachute equipment standards and to investigate skydiving incidents and accidents seem to have led to this HSE-BPA/BS MOU exempting BPA/BS from the health and safety law.

Through this MOU, if Fernandez was writing factually, the HSE apparently negated its legal obligations and duties to protect people at work in MOD and civil parachuting enterprises, and disregard to public safety, handing control over to the CAA - BPA/BS cartel.

In his article on May 9^th 2020, Fernandez discusses the HSE-BPA/BS MOU and makes some quite extraordinary and worrying assertions. Fernandez describes a litany of BPA/BS evasion and resistance to legal compliance and safety improvements proposed by various regulators and authorities.

As BPA Watch has already reported, the CAA-BPA document CAP 660 is not compliant with Health and Safety legislation. Fernandez also attempts to give the impression to readers that BPA/BS is the equivalent of HM Government departments and agencies, stating that the firm carries out regulatory functions and is in practice the Regulator.

Fernandez uses similar language to that later deployed by BPA/BS Chief Operating Officer –– and ghost CEO –– Tony Butler when he describes the HSE as a “threat”. More recently, in a written riposte to the lawsuit brought against BPA/BS by the majority of its affiliated Parachute Training Organisations, Butler described the HSE as a “danger”. Fernandez explains these ‘threats’ to readers:

• Attempts by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) to exercise control over parachute equipment standards and to investigate skydiving incidents and accidents; a move which finally resulted in negotiating a memorandum of understanding whereby the HSE relinquished their position and acknowledged the expertise of British Skydiving (then BPA) and the CAA in matters of skydiving regulation.
• Successful opposition to a subsequent proposal from within the CAA to deregulate skydiving, which would have effectively handed regulation over to the HSE.

In correspondence with HM Inspector Emma Page –– the HSE case officer assigned to the Sgt Fisk investigation ––  and HM Principal Inspector Stephen Faulkner, BPA Watch asked, essentially, if the HSE-BPA/BS MOU amounted to the HSE granting the BPA an exemption from the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974 and HSE jurisdiction.

In response to this and other questions, Mr Faulkner wrote; “The Notice does not represent the conclusion of the investigation, it was served on the RAF in relation to the management of sport parachuting activities undertaken by its employees as part of adventure training.  There are many lines of enquiry which are being undertaken but I am unable to comment on these at this stage.  Please be reassured that we have registered the concerns you have raised”.

The MOD Air Secretariat stated to BPA Watch on October 27^th 2021: “While I note the concerns and questions you have raised, I hope you will understand that a joint investigation is currently underway being conducted by Thames Valley Police and the Health & Safety Executive (HSE). As such, it would be inappropriate to comment until these investigations are complete.

“I can confirm that the Defence Safety Authority has convened a Service Inquiry (SI) to determine the cause of the accident, together with any other contributory or aggravating factors. It may be helpful if I explain that, on completion, the SI panel’s report will be provided to the HSE and the Coroner, and the report will be published on the Gov.uk website.”.

 

Both the HSE and the MOD seem not to understand that the MOD-BPA/BS contract, namely the JSAT affiliation to BPA-BS, has primacy in Law and nullifies the HSE-MOD MOU, thus enabling the HSE-BPA/BS MOU to take legal precedence.

If BPA/BS Communications Manager Angel Fernandez is correct in writing publicly that the “HSE relinquished their position and acknowledged the expertise of British Skydiving (then BPA) and the CAA in matters of skydiving regulation”, it means in effect that BPA Ltd trading as British Skydiving has been granted an exemption from The Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974 and, consequently, HSE jurisdiction. 

Since the 1996 CAA-BPA Exposition, renewed in 2020, BPA/BS is the Regulator for all matters pertaining to parachuting and skydiving and can act as they see fit regardless of statutory provisions.

Aided and abetted by the HSE, the CAA and the MOD, this amateur sports association –– operating as an illegal commercial monopoly –– has been able to circumvent constitutional law and Parliament in order to give the BPA/BS Operations Manual quasi legal status , even though the MOD havepreviously questioned the adequacy of the document.

The HSE have deemed BPA/BS as ‘experts’ on all matters relating to parachuting and skydiving, a blessing which includes all such activities undertaken by the MOD.

The BPA has codified in CAP660 that MOD parachuting qualifications and expertise including those of professional RAF Parachute Jump Instructors (PJI) and Army parachutists are not recognised and that only unaccredited BPA/BS awards are acceptable. 

The firm is aided and abetted in this by the CAA, whose directors have consistently declined to agree that recognised qualifications issued under the Regulated Qualifications Framework by accredited Awarding Bodies are valid.

Despite the warnings of this blog and others to HM Government Ministers, the Police, HSE and MOD Service Inquiry investigators now appear to be sleepwalking into a legal minefield that may take a judicial or parliamentary review to resolve.

Sgt Rachel Fisk: victim of negligence

The MOD seems to have subjugated itself and the expertise of its service personnel –– like the late Sgt Fisk –– along with NVQ and other recognised qualifications to an amateur sports body run by people who pay themselves six-figure annual salaries whilst spending no more than £5,000 a year on safety-related matters.

The HSE seems to have signed away its powers  and, with those powers, the rights of military and civil parachutists to the protection that is their right under The Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974 and related regulations.

If this is so, then whatever findings the HSE and the MOD present to the Coroner, who must rule on the Rachel Fisk fatality, can be deemed as questionable in Law and, more to the point, challenged by the charlatans of British Parachute Association Ltd trading as British Skydiving should the Coroner’s findings not be convenient to BPA/BS.

All the Coroner has to do is ask the HSE to produce its parachuting Code of Practice, a document it cannot produce as no such Code exists. Will the Coroner ask any of the parties involved in the investigation to produce their credentials?

The MOD is the only such party that can field credible parachuting experts but as we have seen, the MOD seems to think the charlatans of BPA/BS more qualified than their own parachuting experts.

We will conclude with a simple question and some food for thought:

Since when has the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974, the protection of persons at work and public safety, together with HSE oversight, ever been considered as a “danger” or a “threat” in the context of the UK regulatory framework?  The answer is obvious: since the introduction of the CAA-BPA Exposition in 1996, which CAA directors claim “reflects Government policy”.

Despite decades of illegal if not downright criminal activity – systematic evasion of health and safety law – the current legal situation would strongly suggest that BPA/BS enjoys the equivalent of Crown Immunity, an immunity reflected in the HSE omission of BPA/BS from the Crown Improvement Notice imposed on the RAF in relation to Sgt Fisk’s death.

The RAF –– JSAT, the Robson Academy of Resilience, RAF Weston-on-the-Green, 2 Group and 22 Group –- and their appointed scapegoat Wing Commander Tim Page should be able to see the HSE off by citing the agreements upon which the BPA Watch team stumbled whilst reporting on the Sgt Fisk affair.

Charlatans: BPA.BS 'interim report' into the death of Sgt Fisk

It seems that none the guilty parties can be prosecuted under The Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974 because of the HSE exemptions that their employers enjoy. Perhaps Thames Valley Police will try to bring charges of corporate manslaughter but would the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) approve such charges?

However, as BPA/BS are the controlling mind and the personnel at RAF WOTG are contractually bound to operate under the auspices of BPA/BS and in accordance with the BPA/BS Operations Manual, Thames Valley Police and the CPS would probably need to bring the charges against BPA/BS and its directorate under the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007 – not the MOD.

BPA Watch now challenges HM Government and its various Enforcing Authorities to do the right thing by reinstituting the rule of law in the UK so that Sgt Rachel Fisk’s bereaved family can obtain some kind of justice relating to their daughter’s entirely avoidable death in the service of her nation. 

Rachel Fisk was at work and died because of the negligence of those controlling and overseeing her activities – BPA/BS officials, cited by the CAA as “world class” and representing the “gold standard” in parachuting.

 

 

 

HEALTH AND SAFETY EXECUTIVE COMPROMISED?

 Since 2023, when British Parachute Association Ltd (BPA) trading as British Skydiving (BS) got away with complicity in the death of Royal Air Force Sergeant and Parachute Jump Instructor Rachel Fisk, there have been four further skydiving-related deaths. This conforms to the average toll of two fatalities a year since the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) cut a deal with BPA now t/a BS in 1996. 

Sarah Albon aka Annie Pub Singer

When faced with potential legal action by injuried skydivers and instructors and next-of-kin, BS has negotiated out-of-court settlements requiring the beneficiaries to sign non-disclosure agreements. One such beneficiary, reportedly, was Sarah Albon, who qualified as a BPA instructor in 1999. According to sources within the firm, now trading as British Skydiving, Mrs Albon accepted a generous cash payment for injuries sustained whilst working as a BPA instructor and signed the usual NDA. 

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.

>>>>>>>>>

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. 

start/..

As it looks like Busby Hicks has not read all of the other articles in the blog and has not noticed that I’ve been named in some of them, when I’ve have been quoted in them after you contacted me by telephone. 

 

You seem to know more about the shenanigans and goings on in the BPA/CAA and the MAA than I did, (I had never heard of the MAA before all this blew up) and I was on the council for 27 years. Also your in-depth knowledge of the police investigations from your interviews with them, are nothing short of stunning to me. The revelations are shocking. 

 

Although I had to correct you on some information that you had, that you were given, (you did correct them in the blog once you verified it) I still think that there are some inaccuracies, due to some people lying to you, (to protect the quilty?) and that is hard to prove sometimes. I did prove to you of three of them that had lied, namely Tony Butler, Jeff Montgomery (who doesn’t link being called Jeff the Hat so I won’t) and George Duncan.

 

So as far as me being a coward hiding behind a pseudonym, I am baffled how anyone could possibly come to that conclusion unless they have not seen any of my posts on my Facebook page or in your blog, or that they a more stupid than they look. Also not one person or PTO will comment on the letter from the HSE to Robert Gibson (affectionately known as The Gibbon or the organ grinders monkey),the poor man having been brought in to take the blame by the looks of it. I don’t think he’s been told the truth either?

 

I will post this reply on my public Facebook page. I expect that there might be some more threats of suing me for slander and libel, like I’ve had before (as I have no evidence of what I said) I will produce that in court, as I’m itching to use some of my professional indemnity on them. 

 

So far the cowardly, backstabbing, lying, incompetent and criminally corrupt c*nts that I’ve exposed have not only backed out, but they have also just carried on entrapping more people with more lies.

Regards Ian 

end/...

 

 

 

CAA & BPA: GOVERNMENT POLICY?

When Civil Aviation Authority-designated Parachuting Regulator Tony Butler finally expressed the British Parachute Association's well-known aversion to the Heath and Safety Executive and its concerted evasion of HSE regulations over the years in writing last February, some observers wondered if Butler was losing his longtime grip on the BPA, now trading as British Skydiving. 

 

CAA-designated regulator Tony Butler: HSE a "danger".

Butler's surprising outburst came in his response to the Parachute Training Organisation Association's objections to the BPA's dubious insurance practices, which have been scrutinised by BPA Watch. The PTOA responded to Butler by having its legal counsel issue notice of an intended lawsuit focusing on BPA/BS' exploitation of its illegal monopoly to force members to buy insurance at inflated rates.

BPA Watch's Don Canard wrote to CAA CEO Richard Moriarty and CAA Safety Director Rob Bishton to see if they would comment on their designated regulator's express aversion to the Heath and Safety Executive. Moriarty and Bishton could fairly be described as being responsible for Butler and his British Parachute Association's de facto quango status.  Don Canard obtained a comment from CAA Safety Officer Richard Bishton. After some discussion, BPA Watch feels that readers should be able to read Don Canard's entire email exchange with Mr Bishton.

quote/...

From: BPA Watch <bpawatch@gmail.com>
Date: Mon, 29 Mar 2021 at 07:21
Subject: Tony Butler and the HSE
To: <richard.moriarty@caa.co.uk>, <Rob.Bishton@caa.co.uk>

Dear Sirs,

In a letter dated 8.2.2021 to the Parachute Training Organisation Association, your delegated parachuting regulator Tony Butler of the British Parachute Association aka British Skydiving openly expressed in writing for the first time his well-known aversion to the Health and Safety Executive and its regulations.

Mr Butler wrote: "If British Skydiving did not exist, either the CAA would need to take on the role and reproduce what the Association does, at a far higher cost, or there is a danger the HSE would likely carry out the role.".

As, respectively, CEO and Safety Officer of the CAA, would one or both of you give BPA Watch a comment on the record about Mr Butler's extraordinary statement? Do you condone or agree with this hostility to HSE regulations?

We can supply a copy of Mr Butler's letter if necessary.

Regards,

Don Canard for BPA Watch

From: Rob Bishton <Rob.Bishton@caa.co.uk>
Date: Mon, 29 Mar 2021 at 10:41
Subject: Re: Tony Butler and the HSE
To: BPA Watch <bpawatch@gmail.com>, Richard Moriarty <Richard.Moriarty@caa.co.uk>

Good morning Canard

Acknowledging safe receipt on behalf of the Civil Aviation Authority and ensuring you that a colleague will provide you with a substantive response in due course.

Kind regards,

Rob Bishton  

From: BPA Watch <bpawatch@gmail.com>
Date: Mon, 29 Mar 2021 at 19:34
Subject: Re: Tony Butler and the HSE
To: Rob Bishton <Rob.Bishton@caa.co.uk>

Dear Mr Bishton,

That will be Mr Canard to you. As a taxpayer, I pay your salary and those of your fellow quangocrats. You are the CAA Safety Director and Mr Moriarty is the CEO. Why cannot either or both of you answer my simple question about the anti-HSE statement of your delegated regulator Tony Butler? I am not interested in any comments from your colleagues. I am asking you. You're the executive directors running Butler. Or is Butler running you?

Simple answer please: are YOU prepared to comment or not.

Rob Bishton: Not me, guv!

Don Canard

From: Rob Bishton <Rob.Bishton@caa.co.uk>
Date: Mon, 29 Mar 2021 at 19:53
Subject: Re: Tony Butler and the HSE
To: BPA Watch <bpawatch@gmail.com>
Cc: Stephen Hillier <Stephen.Hillier@caa.co.uk>, Richard Moriarty <Richard.Moriarty@caa.co.uk>

Mr Canard

The omission of ‘Mr’ was in error. I do apologise. 

Thank you for your email.

Executives of the CAA represent the CAA position and that which reflects government policy. I assure you that you will receive a reply in due course and after due consideration, given much of what is being referred to pre-dates those of us in office at this time. 

The CAA is primarily funded based on cost recovery from the industry we regulate thereby minimising any impact to the tax paying public, who we seek to protect.  

Regards,

 

Rob Bishton

 

From: BPA Watch <bpawatch@gmail.com> Date: Tue, 30 Mar 2021 at 08:32 Subject: Re: Tony Butler and the HSE To: Rob Bishton <Rob.Bishton@caa.co.uk> Cc: <richard.moriarty@caa.co.uk> Dear Mr Bishton, Thanks for the clarification.  We look forward to a further clarification from you both, as the senior CAA decision-makers, of the CAA's position on its regulator's express hostility to the HSE, given the BPA's shocking death and injury toll over the years, during many of which Mr Butler was the firm's National Safety Officer. We do accept that the CAA's relationship with Tony Butler began before you and other current CAA executive directors joined the authority. However, our new article is not talking about the relationship as a whole. We have covered that in some detail already. It covers your designated regulator's extraordinary written outburst about the Health and Safety Executive as well as the impending legal action against BPA Ltd for what amounts to insurance fraud made possible by the illegal monopoly it enjoys, thanks in no small part to CAA complicity. Regards, Don Canard   end quote/…   Richard Moriarty is known for ignoring questions he finds awkward or for tasking subordinates with responding to them, often without adequate or accurate briefings. Rob Bishton's initial response to Don Canard aped his boss' style in declining to comment whilst promising a response from some unspecified 'colleague' at some unspecified point in the future.    Whether this reticence on the part of the two senior executive directors of this increasngly embattled quango is because they are unwilling to comment or because they are incapable of commenting remains to be seen but CAA insiders have said of Mr Bishton that "he is not the sharpest knife in the drawer even if he thinks he is very smart.".    When pushed by Don Canard, Mr Bishton's effective assertion that most of the dubious behaviour associated with the BPA trading as British Skydiving pre-dates the current CAA directorship's time in office amounted to an admission that BPA conduct is indeed dubious. However, it also came across as a rather hollow rejection of regulatory responsibility.    Richard Moriarty joined the CAA as Deputy Chief Executive in 2016 after serving as CEO of the Legal Services Board and was promoted to the post of CEO in May 2018. Rob Bishton joined the CAA in 2014, serving as Head of Flight Operations and on the Safety and Airspace Regulation's senior leadership team. Mr Moriarty appointed Mr Bishton as Director of Safety and Airspace Regulation in November 2019.    Bishton was the CAA's first non-ministerial appointment to the post. Bishton's predecessor, Air Commodore Mark Swan, was appointed in 2008 by Transport Minister Geoff Hoon. Air Commodore Swan had almost thirty years of experience with the RAF as a fast jet pilot and was Director of Operational Capability at the Ministry of Defence when posted to the CAA.    Bishton's LinkedIn CV lists his education as Repton, a private school in Derbyshire. Bishton does not list any graduate or post-graduate educational experience or qualifications. Elsewhere, it transpires that he has been an airline pilot since 1993. From March 2007 to January 2010, Bishton served as Director of Operations of Astraeus Airlines during the firm's final slide towards bankruptcy.    Bishton was then employed by EasyJet, where he was appointed Chief Pilot before being marched out of the firm's offices between two security guards in March 2012. After spending some time on what The Times described as "gardening leave', Bishton was taken on the budget African airline FastJet as Group Operations Director, a job he held for two years before joining the CAA in 2014.     BPA Ltd has been the CAA's de facto parachuting regulator since 1996, when the two organisations drew up an Exposition together. BPA Ltd directors and councillors demanding sight of this Exposition have been subjected to constructive dismissal tactics by the ghost directorship of BPA Ltd, headed by former BPA National Safety Officer Tony Butler, who has no formal qualifications in the field.  While Rob Bishton rightly says that all of this pre-dated his time at the CAA, he was certainly in post alongside his mentor Moriarty when the CAA-BPA Exposition was superseded by a new CAA-British Skydiving Exposition in 2020. Both the BPA ghost directorship and their counterparts at the CAA are remarkably relucant to show anyone this document.  CAA CEO Moriarty: tight-lipped Moriarty and Bishton were in post when the CAP 660 relating to sports parachuting in the United Kingdom was revised in 2020. CAA Oversight Manager Jim Frampton asked several HM Government-trained parachuting specialists to review CAP 660 and to produce a more Health and Safety-compliant version, published as CAP 666.  According to CAA insiders, Jim Frampton was effectively sacked by Bishton and Moriarty, CAP 666 was shelved and CAP 660 remained as non-compliant with Health and Safety legisation and regulations as previously. It also went further than previous editions in advancing and consolidating the illegal BPA monopoly on parachuting in the UK. As for Rob Bishton's statement that: "The CAA is primarily funded based on cost recovery from the industry we regulate thereby minimising any impact to the tax paying public, who we seek to protect.", the CAA's failure to collect appropriate annual fees from BPA Ltd since 1996 is believed to have enabled the allegedly not-for-profit sporting association to amassed a slush fund containing more than £3 million, subsidised by"the tax-paying public" to whom Rob Bishton refers.   However, the most questionable of Rob Bishton's statements to Don Canard of BPA Watch concerns his assertion that the CAA's position –– in relation to BPA/BS and its numerous and well-documented misdeeds, "reflects government policy.".    Do the many documented instances of BPA/BS skulduggery during its time as a CAA-designated regulator and the CAA's obviously complicity in establishing and protecting the lucrative BPA/BS monopoly really reflect government policy? Roman Kandells

BPA DEATH TOLL – CAA RESPONSIBILITY

The Civil Aviation Authority has a responsibility to make sure that when it issues a Permission to Parachute, the parachuting is carried out safely. The CAA is not competent to meet this responsibility and has therefore delegated regulatory oversight to British Parachute Association Ltd trading as British Skydiving, as the BPA itself confirms in various documents and on its website. 

In a letter to the Parachute Training Organisation Association dated 8.2.2021, BPA COO Tony Butler states: If British Skydiving did not exist, either the CAA would need to take on the role and reproduce what the Association does, at a far higher cost, or there is a danger the HSE would likely carry out the role.".  

Documentary evidence of BPA/BS hostility to the HSE and its regulations is rare but this is a prime and current example.  Here we have Tony Butler, who has run BPA Ltd trading as British Skydiving for many years as its ghost supremo after serving as the Association's National Safety Officer for years, expressing the BPA's hostility to the Health and Safety Executive in writing. 

CAA Safety Director Rob Bishton

BPA Watch wrote jointly to CAA CEO Richard Moriarty and Safety Director Rob Bishton asking for a comment on their designated parachuting regulator Mr Butler's express hostility to the Heath and Safety Executive. Rob Bishton responded: "Executives of the CAA represent the CAA position and that which reflects government policy. I assure you that you will receive a reply in due course and after due consideration, given much of what is being referred to pre-dates those of us in office at this time.". 

A long-serving former member of the BPA Council of Governors told BPA Watch; "Since the early 1990’s when the UK Government introduced legislation such as the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations, the strategy of the BPA has been to avoid at all costs any form of HSE regulation or oversight.

"Although the BPA have over many years intimidated PTOs and others into not reporting accidents in accordance with RIDDOR and ordered them never to involve the HSE –– the threat being loss of their BPA ratings –– the BPA have always avoided putting anything in writing – until now. This recent letter from Butler to the PTOA clearly indicates what is happening - the BPA is conspiring to break the law.   

"There are approximately 700 people employed in skydiving, whether they are directly employed, contractors, self-employed or volunteers. All of these instructors, riggers and packers are at work and subject to the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974, and therefore subject to HSE Regulation.  Butler was the BPA National Safety Officer in the 1990s when John Ward died and narrowly escaped a charge of corporate manslaughter.

"Butler's arrogance is astonishing. It's not only because he has gotten away with it for years. He actually believes that he is the Regulator, not the CAA or the HSE. Butler has total control over skydiving – PTOs, instructors, everything – it is a dictatorship. The BPA has managed to avoid being called to account for any of the 50 or 60 deaths on its watch during Butler's reign, which is why Butler doesn't want anything to do with the HSE!

"Any accident at work involving death or serious injury opens a company up to prosecution by the HSE if there is negligence. So Butler doesn't want anything to do with the HSE.  There is an added advantage, as the BPA do not categorise and report accidents in accordance with RIDDOR, which enables them to manipulate the figures. The BPA accident and injury rates are far higher than those being disclosed to the CAA and the outside world.".   

In and of itself, this would be very serious given the shocking death and injury toll on Butler's watch as National Safety Officer and, more recently, Chief Operating Officer, a title allowing him to receive a high salary and other perks whilst pretending not to be a director of the firm. Everyone knows that the BPA Council is a smoke and mirrors exercise, that it has no actual power and that Butler runs the BPA aka BS like a personal fiefdom along the lines of a Sepp Blatter or a Bernie Ecclestone.

Out of control: Tony Butler

The fact that the CAA has effectively made Butler the UK parachuting regulator and that successive CAA Security Directors have failed to reign Butler and his cronies in and to make the firm and its CAP 660 more Health and Safety-compliant a a scandal-in-waiting. BPA Watch has communicated with a number of individuals whose warnings to the CAA about the BPA have been ignored. Or have they?

Until recently, CAA Safety Directors were appointed by ministers of state and tended to have impressive CVs as military officers and test pilots but this changed in 2019 when CAA CEO Richard Moriarty appointed the current incumbent from within CAA ranks. In 2010, the Ministry of Defence responded to concerns about the CAA's reliability by setting up the Military Aviation Authority or MAA. 

A  currently serving member of the BPA Council of Governors, who recently contacted BPA Watch but asked to remain anonymous to avoid reprisals, expressed his exasperation and frustrations: "The BPA operates like a private members club from the 1960’s. The organisation is run by a group of doddering old fools behind closed doors, who have not moved on with the times. 

"The council have little or no say and the Chair is always Butler's puppet. I am not even sure if they are aware of current legislation. They are in charge and make the all rules and everyone must obey. The Law doesn’t apply to them or so they believe.".

He and other BPA Council members are becoming increasingly concerned that as Directors of British Parachute Association Ltd, they could be held culpable for the illegal activities and potentially corrupt behaviour of Butler and the cabal of ghost directors that have controlled the BPA for many years. 

Later on in his letter to the PTOA, Butler refers to the BPA insurance scheme, which was examined in detail by BPA Watch and is one of the main topics of the letter to BPA Ltd from the PTOA's legal counsel:  "If the current policy is changed and different sections/members are covered in different areas for different amounts, everyone is vulnerable. This could include the PTOs, instructors, riggers, packers, members carrying out student talkdown etc, anyone who may have been involved. 

"If any of the above members were operating at a PTO, that for example had obtained a policy that only covered the business in order to obtain cheaper insurance (e.g. only insured for a claim against the PTO itself from a Tandem student), a PTO could try to deflect the claim to one another person in the chain. If those in the chain were unable to obtain adequate cover, would any of them be prepared to work or volunteer at the PTO and possibly put their house or other assets on the line?". 

[Editorial note: Tony Butler is clearly admitting that people are at work––and therefore subject to HSE regulation]

A former PTO owner who served on the BPA Council for a time told BPA Watch: "The clock is now ticking for Butler and the BPA. When the proverbial hits the fan, which it will, the fall-out is not going to be good for skydiving or for anyone else implicated. The BPA are going to be assigned to the scrap heap of history and people could possibly go to jail.

"There are 60 dead bodies, some of which are genuine accidents, but others are blatant corporate manslaughter and as BPA Watch have pointed out, there is potentially a murder or two lurking in the body count. People are now talking and questioning. This is a mess; it is going to explode in everyone’s face. Eventually there is going to have to be a public enquiry or a massive cover-up.  

"The HSE is going to be severely embarrassed for being asleep on watch and having the wool pulled over their eyes by the BPA for 25 years or more. As for the CAA, they have been dragged into the cesspit that is the BPA by Butler and Co and are up to their necks in it. The BPA could not have operated outside the law for so long without the CAA aiding and abetting them.". 

BPA Watch