Paul Flynn – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Transport
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Paul Flynn on 2014-07-16.
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, on what dates the no-fly zones around nuclear facilities have been violated since May 2010; and what steps his Department has taken to ensure such violations do not occur in future.
Mr Robert Goodwill
The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) maintains a complaint log for three years. Since June 2011, it has received 12 complaints from onsite Security Guards about aircraft which they believe may have overflown their respective sites at low level. The dates of these incidents were:
| 12/06/2011 | 25/07/2012 | 25/08/2013 |
| 14/06/2011 | 02/01/2013 | 09/09/2013 |
| 24/06/2011 | 14/01/2013 | 03/10/2013 |
| 17/08/2011 | 15/08/2013 | 21/05/2014 |
All these recorded incidents were investigated, but due to a lack of evidence the only case which led to a successful prosecution occurred on 25 August 2013 and involved the use of a small unmanned aerial vehicle.
The need to report to the CAA all aircraft which appear to be low flying is written in the nuclear site’s security procedures manual. The successful prosecution demonstrates that the CAA investigates all such reported incidents and that it will take enforcement action when there is sufficient evidence available. In addition, both the CAA and the Department for Energy and Climate Change seek to learn what they can from the investigations into reported incidents.
