Overall

WILL BPA OFFICIALS FACE CHARGES?

In the CAA-BPA Exposition, revised several times since 1996, BPA Ltd trading as British Skydiving makes the extraordinary and false claim that contravention of the British Skydiving Operations Manual is a breach of legal requirements.

However, a recently disclosed professional 49-page report exposes BPA Ltd malpractice and lawbreaking over several decades. You can request a copy of this report by clicking on this link, as well as a copy of the CAA-BPA Exposition.

Should BPA Ltd directors and members of the BPA Ltd Council of Governors past and present who served as fronts for the firm's ghost directorate be seeking legal advice about statutes of limitations relating to this lawbreaking?

BPA Ltd offences include wilful evasion of Health and Safety Executive scrutiny and regulation, as the following extract from the report's conclusions shows.







 


IS TONY BUTLER A GHOST DIRECTOR OF CAA GENERAL AVIATION DIVISION?

It should be noted that CAA legal counsel Kate Staples completed tertiary education, unless she paid someone to sit her exams for her.

CAA Safety Director Rob Bishton probably obtained enough A Levels to blag his way onto the pilot-training programme of the first of the several bucketshop airlines that employed him before he was stopped from endangering planeloads of Ibiza-bound pillsheads and African peasants and given desk jobs.

After being marched out of EasyJet's offices between two security men, he spent some time in Africa before seeking refuge in quangoland.

However, Staples and Bishton are equally thick, proving that paper qualifications are not proof of intellectual functionality.

 As for Phillip Clark, 'Business Manager' and spokesman for Bishton and CEO Richard Moriarty, he says and writes what he is told to write. Because we all know what happens to CAA officials who do not toe the line. But he seems just as thick. 

And they all seem to believe that readers will take their assertions at face value.


From: BPA Watch <bpawatch@gmail.com>
Date: Sun, 23 May 2021 at 09:33
Subject: Re: CAA members
To: Kate Staples <Kate.Staples@caa.co.uk>

Dear Kate Staples,

If Tony Butler is not influencing George Duncan and Rob Bishton, then the CAA is in control of Butler and his monopoly. In other words, the CAA is responsible for BPA/BS law-breaking and evasion. As well as all of the deaths and life-changing injuries occurring on the BPA-BS watch. But as Mr Bishton told us, all of the current CAA directors inherited the situation as codified in the CAA-BPA Exposition, In others, none of you is to blame for any of this, right? "Not us, guv!". We'd love to see you arguing that position in front of a judicial review.

Sincerely,

Don Canard.

On Tue, 18 May 2021 at 10:15, Kate Staples <Kate.Staples@caa.co.uk> wrote:

Dear Mr Canard

My colleague Philip Clarke has shared with me your email of 14 May 2021. In that email you wrote:

I  hope this finds you well. A new report in the possession of the Parachute Training Organisation Association Ltd –– which is suing your regulator BPA Ltd trading as British Skydiving –– asks if BPA Ltd COO Tony Butler is a ghost director of the Civil Aviation Authority. Given the obvious and well-documented influence of Mr Butler on CAA executive decisions in relation to parachuting, do your bosses Messrs Moriarty and Bishton agree with this thesis? Would this explain their unquestioning defence of Mr Butler and the monopoly over which he presides with the equally well documented support of the CAA?

The CAA website provides details of the membership of the CAA: CAA board and staff | UK Civil Aviation Authority. Non-executive members, including the Chair, are appointed by the Secretary of State for Transport. The Chief Executive is appointed by the Chair, subject to the approval of the Secretary of State, and other executive members are appointed by the Chief Executive with the approval of a non-executive member.

As you will see from the above, Mr Butler is not a member of the CAA. Nor is Mr Butler a ghost director of the CAA. Moreover, he does not and cannot wield the sort of influence that you describe in your email.

Given that the position is absolutely clear the CAA will not respond to any further correspondence of this nature.

Yours sincerely

Kate Staples
General Counsel and Secretary to the Civil Aviation Authority

Tel: 0330 138 3053

 

My pronouns are: she/her

 


 

From: BPA Watch <bpawatch@gmail.com>
Date: Fri, 14 May 2021 at 13:35
Subject: CAA Ghost Directors
To: Clarke Philip <Philip.Clarke@caa.co.uk>
Cc: <richard.moriarty@caa.co.uk>, Rob Bishton <Rob.Bishton@caa.co.uk>

Dear Mr Clarke,

I  hope this finds you well. A new report in the possession of the Parachute Training Organisation Association Ltd –– which is suing your regulator BPA Ltd trading as British Skydiving –– asks if BPA Ltd COO Tony Butler is a ghost director of the Civil Aviation Authority. Given the obvious and well-documented influence of Mr Butler on CAA executive decisions in relation to parachuting, do your bosses Messrs Moriarty and Bishton agree with this thesis? Would this explain their unquestioning defence of Mr Butler and the monopoly over which he presides with the equally well documented support of the CAA?

Regards,

Don Canard





CAA STICKS FOOT IN MOUTH - AGAIN

This email exchange with the CAA prompts us to wonder what kind of criteria the CAA applies when deciding if a body like "British Parachute Association Limited, trading as British Skydiving, meets the requirements to hold the approval that has been granted to it.".

From: Philip Clarke <Philip.Clarke@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Wed, 14 Apr 2021 at 17:25
Subject: FW: Tony Butler and the HSE
To: bpawatch@gmail.com <bpawatch@gmail.com>

Dear Mr Canard

I am writing in response to your email of 29 March 2021 to Richard Moriarty and Rob Bishton, in which you sought the CAA’s view on comments made by Tony Butler of British Skydiving (the trading name of British Parachute Association Ltd) in relation to the Health and Safety Executive.

It is not appropriate for the CAA to comment on statements made by another party, even where that party holds an approval granted by the CAA. The CAA is, and continues to be, satisfied that British Parachute Association Limited, trading as British Skydiving, meets the requirements to hold the approval that has been granted to it.

Kind regards

Philip Clarke (he/him)

Business Manager to the Chair and Chief Executive

At the CAA we respect agile working so, while it suits me to send this now, please only respond to this email inside your normal working hours.

Follow us on Twitter: @UK_CAA

Please consider the environment. Think before printing this email.    


From: BPA Watch <bpawatch@gmail.com>

Sent: Monday, March 29, 2021 6:21:49 AM
To: Richard Moriarty <Richard.Moriarty@xxxxxxx>; Rob Bishton <Rob.Bishton@xxxxxxx.>
Subject: Tony Butler and the HSE

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



BPA STABS CAA IN BACK

For years, the Civil Aviation Authority has denied aiding and abetting the transformation of the British Parachuting Association into a commercial monopoly. No good turn goes unpunished, as the CAA and its slippery directors are about to learn. 

Facing a multi-million pound lawsuit involving insurance-related malfeasance facilitated by BPA's CAA-sponsored monopoly, the BPA has taken the unexpected defensive measure of publishing the Exposition through which the CAA delegated regulatory oversight to the BPA, trading as British Skydiving. 

Both the CAA and its parachuting regulator had tenaciously refused to disclose the Exposition in its various forms since 1996. A BPA insider said: "Our management, well, Tony Butler to be more precise, thinks the BPA can avoid civil or even criminal prosecution under anti-monopoly laws by, basically, blaming the CAA for turning the BPA into a monopoly. We call him Teflon Tony. He always finds a fall guy and now it's the CAA itself.".  

A few days before the BPA's publication of the CAA-BPA Exposition, senior CAA executive director Rob Bishton wrote to BPA Watch: "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.". 

Was Bishton attempting to exculpate the current CAA directorate for the numerous transgressions of various laws, regulations and guidelines by the authors of the Exposition? Will ministers and parliamentarians agree with his express view that the doubtful legality of this contract and its blatant codification of the monopoly enjoyed by the BPA "reflects government policy". We shall see about that.

From the 2020 Edition of the CAA-BPA Exposition

Originally set up in the early 1960s as a not-for-profit amateur sporting association with the aim of enabling skydivers to obtain cheaper insurance, BPA Ltd has been a commercial enterprise for decades and, as such, was not a fit and proper body to act as a government regulator. The original CAA-BPA Exposition of 1996 was overseen by CAA official Major Tom Oxley. Oxley was also a long-serving BPA Council member but nobody questioned the obvious conflict of interest.

Oxley's successor George Duncan has long been perceived as Tony Butler's poodle, an obedient quangocrat who approves anything Butler puts in front of him on behalf of the BPA. 

Although CAA CEO Richard Moriarty did not join the CAA until 2016, Rob Bishton had been at the CAA for some ten months the time the CAA-BPA Exposition was updated in November 2014. However, this is not really the issue. The issue is that neither Moriarty nor Bishton acted to curb the abuses of power by the BPA. 

On the contrary, Bishton failed as Safety and Airspace Director to follow Oversight and Compliance Manager Jim Frampton's recommendations that CAP 660, co-authored by the BPA and the CAA, be rendered more compliant with Health and Safety laws and regulations. Instead, Bishton permitted the BPA to use the 2020 revision of CAP 660 to extend and consolidate its monopoly over parachuting. CAA insiders allege that Frampton suffered constructive dismissal by Bishton and his mentor Moriarty for trying to do his job. 

The 2020 Edition of the CAA-BPA Exposition was signed off by CAA official Hannah Foskett who, like her colleague George Duncan, has been accused by non-BPA parachuting organisations of obstructive interference in their affairs on behalf of the BPA by withholding the parachuting approvals and permissions that the CAA is obliged by law –– in the form of the Air Navigation Order –– to grant to any person or persons whose competence is not in question. 

In fairness to middle-ranking CAA officials like Duncan and Foskett, the CAA-BPA Exposition obliges them to do as Tony Butler and the BPA tells them, just as senior executive directors like Moriarty and Bishton have to follow BPA orders. The Exposition not only gives the BPA regulatory oversight but effectively renders the CAA subordinate to the BPA. With this in mind, is it surprising that Tony Butler and his cronies think they can throw the CAA under the bus to avoid civil prosecution by the PTO Association for operating an illegal monopoly?  

Don Canard


 






 

 


STOP PRESS: BPA'S TONY BUTLER LOSES LICENCE

Word reaches BPA Watch that BPA ghost supremo known as Tony Butler is to have his driving licence withdrawn by DVLA on the grounds that he is not human. 

The reported ban will be hard on the skydiving alien who has developed a taste for Bentley Coupés with personalised numberplates as long as they are paid for by BPA members.

As the CAA's designated parachuting regulator, our extraterrestrial imposter might be able to persuade the CAA to issue him with a limousine and chauffeur.

BPA-CAA EVASION OF HSE REGULATIONS

The British Parachute Association and its ghost directorship's evasion of Health and Safety regulations over the years is well-known, as is the complicity of senior Civil Aviation Authority officials. But when the CAA's de facto parachuting regulator Tony Butler of the BPA –– now trading as British Skydiving –– described the Health and Safety Executive as "a danger" in an official BPA/BS document last February, observers wondered if the Association's longtime ghost supremo was losing the plot.

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


Tony Butler flipping the finger

Butler has admitted to involvement in BPA investigations into more than fifty deaths during his time as an employee of BPA Ltd. Some BPA insiders suggest the death toll is more than sixty. As BPA Ltd's accounts show, the firm's average annual safety-related spending is around £5,000 or less. 

 

Prior to assuming the role of Chief Operating Officer, Butler was the BPA's National Safety Officer. He has always avoiding being a director of BPA Ltd, no doubt believing that this will enable him to evade responsibility for the firm's numerous questionable activities.

 

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, a status that is in itself of questionable legality because a quango like the CAA lacks the ministerial power required to create a quango.  Don Canard obtained a comment from CAA Safety Director Richard Bishton but we feel that readers should see Bishton's entire response to Mr Canard. 

 

From: Rob Bishton
Date: Mon, 29 Mar 2021 at 19:53
Subject: Re: Tony Butler and the HSE
To: BPA Watch


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


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.". Mr Bishton's 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 and that he and his directorial colleagues know it. However, it also came across as a rather hollow rejection of regulatory responsibility.

 

CAA Safety Director Rob Bishton

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 but 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 at 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 much of this pre-dated his time at the CAA, he was certainly in post alongside his mentor CAA CEO Richard Moriarty when the CAA-BPA Exposition was superseded by a new CAA-British Skydiving Exposition in 2021. Both the BPA ghost directorship and their counterparts at the CAA are remarkably reluctant to show anyone this document. 

 

Bishton states that: "The CAA is primarily funded based on cost recovery from the industry we regulate thereby minimising any impact to the taxpaying public, who we seek to protect.". However, the CAA's continuing failure to collect appropriate annual and other fees from BPA Ltd since 1996 is widely seen as enabling the allegedly not-for-profit amateur sporting association to amass a slush fund containing more than £3 million. 

 

This has been subsidised by the taxpayers whom Bishton claims the CAA is protecting and by other fee-payers in the aviation industry who also subsidise the significant shortfalls in CAA charges to the BPA for regulation. Is this the "cost recovery from industry" to which Bishton refers? 

 

Bishton was certainly in post when the highly dubious CAP 660 governing sports parachuting in the UK was revised in 2020. The revision was pushed through without full consultation. Bishton failed to use this opportunity to render CAP 660 more compliant with Health and Safety legislation. BPA/BS, on the other hand, used the revision to advance and consolidate its illegal and lucrative monopoly on parachuting in the UK with no objections from CAP 660's co-author, the CAA. 

 

Bishton and other CAA officials were in post when fatalities and injuries occurred on the BPA/BS watch. Bishton protests that he and his colleagues inherited the BPA/BS situation and its baggage. This is true but it is just as true that none of them acted to rectify matters. On the contrary, they appear to have perpetuated the CAA's blatant aiding and abetting of BPA/BS and its various illegal activities, some of which are now the subject of a multi-million pound lawsuit brought by the PTO Association. 


Is it time for a Government Enquiry into the CAA-BPA relationship with its numerous failures, illegal activities and shocking death and injury toll and the fitness of the CAA and its mini-me quango BPA/BS to regulate parachuting? 

 

Roman Kandells

 




 






STOP PRESS: ACTION MAN TO LOSE BPA RATINGS

BPA insiders say that Action Man is in line to lose his BPA ratings. The iconic alpha male apparently upset the Civil Aviation Authority's parachuting regulator Tony Butler by asking him to produce his qualifications. Action Man had already incurred the wrath of the CAA when he suggested that CAP 660 ought to be printed on toilet paper. Dennis the Menace told BPA Watch: "I don't give a monkeys what the BPA or the CAA or all the rest of the alphabet spaghetti gang say! Action Man will be parachuting from my bedroom window for as long as I have any say in it. My mum says they're all shysters with the morals of backstreet money sharks. If only half this blog is true, they should all be in jail!".  

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




 






HSE EXEMPTS BPA FROM H&S LAW?

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