Coventry Council to ban drones

I would expect nothing less from Coventry Council. Last paragraph sums it up. £50 to fly for commercial use. Money making scam.

That’s two now:

Kneejerk reactions to ruin everything for the majority of law-abiding drone pilots. Imagine if Gatwick actually turns out not to have been a drone the whole time :expressionless:

I wouldnt expect anything else from this council, Dogs can crap all over the parks, and CCTV all over the place ( which I agree with ) but some old lady is bothered by a drone with a camera. Do these people not realise I dont give a toss what they do and I certainly dont want to take pictures of them.
And they say we live in a free country.

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Im afraid that there’ll be more to follow, im sure. I’ve no doubt there will more bad press to come and further restrictions placed across the UK.

:-1:

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It’s interesting as the council surely don’t regulate the airspace? They can restrict take off and landing but not fly over

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Yes, that’s correct, they can only control take off and landing, not the actual flight path. The CAA said exactly this at their recent talk at the drone show (which I think is recorded and online somewhere). Nobody owns the skies.

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It was interesting to see in the article that they would charge you £50 for permission to fly then also charge you for our own photography. Have they missed something about intellectual property rights. I have all ways understood that if I take pics with my DSLR the pics belong to me surely the same applies to drone pics and vids?

This looks a totally logical and considered response to recent events and, I stress, is not a knee jerk, vote winning, half baked suggestion from a group of people that have not even looked at existing codes in place and the view of the CAA.

Way to go Cov🙄

Not popular according to the newspaper poll

I expect that all councils will soon take up this drone ban idea.

They don’t own the sky above.

So … You are caught by a council Jobs-worth flying your drone from council land.

Any legal people on here ?

What can the council actually do ?

Confiscate your drone ?
Fines ?

Under what law can they fine you for ?

The first test case in court will be interesting.

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Your probably right, police will be told to make drone owners top priority over murders, rapists etc.

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We’re practically public enemy No1 for absolutely zero reasons! :thinking::roll_eyes:

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Looks that way, it’s all the fake news the press are putting out

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It is not unexpected.
Well I hope it’s enforced with the full force of all laws both vigorously and harshly, just like the sign that says on my park which states dogs MUST be on a lead herein.
Can’t even walk in there for a second without being plagued by the lead less things.

How are they planning on enforcing this?

There was a post on this forum about DJI releasing an app to track the pilot and drone and until that comes out, are the council planning on investing thousands into the DJI AeroScope for their drone security solution?

I’ve noticed the council near me has banned drones and model aircrafts in all the parks, even out in the sticks parks and fields no one goes to, sure they have their reasons.

Those of us in London know the struggle of the Heathrow NFZ, the London NFZ, Royal Parks and National Trust parks making it near on impossible to fly.

Fortunately, in Richmond, they have dedicated a small section of the park to allow drones and model aircraft to fly. This is a positive move since so many people are buying drones, it’s better to have people flying them in a controlled space rather than in one of the many banned locations. Last time I was there, the sign for the flying field had the text/sign taken down and dog walkers could clearly see people flying drones and getting quite angry walking through the flying field (and not the designated paths) that their dogs were barking at the drones… Led me to believe they may ditch the flying field due to complaints.

If the council want to ban them, I would advise they offer safe location in one of their parks to fly them.

The other area needs changing is the name of drones. Drones or UAV’s are different than model aircrafts and operate differently. The chap next to me with his model aircraft needs a strip to take off/land and doing fancy air acrobatics near trees. The drone flyers are taking off/landing vertically (VTOL to make us sound more professional :sunglasses:) and can hover with what I would argue, much greater control and safer than a model aircraft. The FPV folks will be in a tough spot as they fit in between the two categories.

The TL;DR of this being, argue with councils that drones are not model aircrafts (safer + more control) either allow them or provide a safe space to use them.

I did put this to Coventry City Council around a year and a half ago. They said they couldn’t afford it. I mean! They could charge parking and make money!
Drones are a recognised sport. But because there are relatively so few of us at the moment, they, and most other councils, will be reluctant to provide an area. I got the impression that they are worried about an accident, and they would be liable as they provided an area. I stated that users must have insurance to use such flying area, but it fell on deaf ignorant ears.

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You’ve hit the nail on the head!

That is likely the exact reason why this is the case, the press of a drone injuring someone would be on the front pages and the knee-jerk reaction will be “why didn’t the council ban them?”.

One option would be to fence or cordon off part of a less popular park and have that as the drone field.

As you’ve mentioned, we’re in the minority and with bad press coverage yet an enterprising landowner could offer “drone days” and let you fly on their land in exchange for a small payment (or up-sell you on tea & coffee) and if they want, vet you for flyer-ID and PLI. That circumvents the council completely however, it’s dependant on someone. Often wondered about using shopping centre car parks for flying a drone at night or flying over a museum on the day they are as some will be closed on a weekday.

Sounds like Coventy Council and going to stick to their decision and no amount of arguing is going to change their mind. For now, the best thing we can do is avoid them and as a community, use drone-scene to build up a bigger map of where and where we can’t fly.

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