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St Agnes flying ban

General discussion on any topic which doesn't have a natural home on any of the other boards.
Nigel Argall
Posts: 138
Joined: 20 Mar 2015, 18:26
Location: Cornwall

St Agnes flying ban

Post by Nigel Argall »

Friends,
Some of you will have heard through the grapevine that we have been banned from flying at St. Agnes in Cornwall. Needless to say, we are not taking this lying down and plan to fight as best we can.
Having said that, my colleague Chris Imrie has drilled down into the legislation and the situation is potentially much more worrying then we realised. In our case, St Agnes (and all the surrounding coast) is administered by the National Trust (who we had a good relationship with), but it is also a site of special scientific Interest (SSSI). Now… SSSI are administered by ‘Natural England’ (No – we’d never heard of them either – they are a classic government QUANGO), and there is a coverall piece of legislation (you can look at ‘Natural England byelaws for protection of site of special scientific intertest), that dictates what you can and cannot do in an SSSI. Their approach is basically to pretty much ban everything (specifically including models, hang gliders, dogs, mountain bikes etc) and then you can ask for a ‘licence’ for an activity and NE decide if you can do it. Incidentally, this is not a future threat, it is a here-and-now ban.
The NT appears to be absolutely gutless here and is just doing whatever NE say without any consideration for those it might affect.
The worrying thing is how many sites turn out to be SSSIs. ‘The common’ at Long Mynd is an SSSI as is Ivinghoe beacon.
Now, I’m not one for starting panic and worry so the first thing, if you fly at such a site is to try and locate a map of the specific boundaries of the SSSI as it may not affect you.
We have already started a productive dialogue with Andy Symons and Dave Phipps at BMFA who are being very helpful. Chris Imrie and I are preparing a paper outlining our arguments and we will talk to BMFA next week about strategy – we need to be fighting this both locally and nationally. Our plan is to agree our arguments and then try and present to NE.
We do have some significant arguments – for example, NE are cash strapped (as are NT) and they simply don’t have the ability to enforce a ban. Our argument with NT has always been that it is better to have us flying and encouraging ‘good practice’ (e.g. we land if we see a peregrine falcon) rather than banning us (as a local club) and just letting the mavericks get on with it.
This is going to take some time to play out, so I’ll keep you informed. In the meantime, if any of you have any specialised knowledge and can help, please do get in touch. Email is best: nigel.argall@gmail.com
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Cliff Evans
Posts: 1032
Joined: 29 Dec 2019, 15:13
Location: Bristol
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Re: St Agnes flying ban

Post by Cliff Evans »

The site in Yatton Nr Bristol, "Woodspring Wings" is designated an SSSI site, as stated on their "about us" page. I would contact them and ask for any guidance they could give you in dealing with Natural England. I also believe that this is known to the BMFA. Woodspring have an annual show where the public attend in their thousands. It has been proven at the site that the nature is not affected in any way by model aeroplanes. Obviously they are a power site and fly all types of power there including jets without disturbing the wildlife. I know they have breeding swans there who are not at all bothered by the models. You can contact them via the link here: https://www.woodspringwings.co.uk/about-us/contact-us/

If you find they are not very helpful, please let me know, I will approach them personally.
https://lasercutsailplanes.co.uk
https://patteaklegliders.co.uk
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