All layers enabled and it’s OK to fly over 2 nuclear power stations, stick to Dronescene.
I merely pointed out that Drone Prep shows who owns the land, which is why I use it. It’s not a flight planner like Drone Scene, which does not show landowners.
Droneprep claims to show no fly zones. Clearly it doesn’t. Even DJI won’t let you fly over a nuclear power station.
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I asked Drone Prep co-founder Claire Owen about this. She replied: “Hi Gary - the FRZ layer is published by NATS. It’s called UAS airspace restrictions and is made up of FRZs which we show in the map. The NATS dataset doesn’t include power station etc, but this is something we’re working on bringing into the app soon.”
Make of that what you will.
If we could get this discussion thread back on to the topic of National Trust policy correspondence please.
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I asked the CAA the following question:
“Are the National Trust legally allowed to ban the flying of drones in airspace above / over their properties, providing the drone code is adhered to and the vehicle is launched and landed outside of their land? My understanding was that the CAA govern all airspace around Britain? Surely the National Trust’s byelaws would only apply to land and not air?”
And this is the answer I received today:
"The aviation regulations only address the flight safety aspects of the flight and they do not constitute permission to disregard the legitimate interests of other statutory bodies such as the Police and Emergency Services, the Highway Agency, local authorities or any other statutory body. As the range and scale of unmanned aircraft operations continues to grow, statutory bodies are increasingly aware of how unmanned aircraft operations will affect their areas of responsibility and are developing specific policy, guidelines and byelaws.
In many circumstances, the operation of UAS falls within the remit of non-aviation national legislation, and local byelaws, for example public-order offences, ensuring pedestrian and vehicle rights-of-way, security and safety in public places and at schools, limits on recreational activities in public parks etc.
Unmanned aircraft operators should also be mindful of the requirements of Section 76(1) of the Civil Aviation Act 1982 in relation to trespass and nuisance, noting that they must comply, at all times, with the relevant UAS operating regulations.
Unmanned aircraft should be flown at a height over the property of another person which is ‘reasonable’ in all circumstances. Failure to do so could amount to trespass if the flight interferes with another person’s ordinary use and enjoyment of land and the structures upon it.
If you have any further queries, please do not hesitate to contact us.
Kind regards
Gunita Gruseva
Shared Services Officer
Consumers And Safety
Civil Aviation Authority"
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Hmmmm, an answer which doesn’t really answer the question?
I’m guessing it’ll only really be sorted when the NT take a UAV pilot to court … and even then probably not
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It’s not within the CAA’s interest to get involved with that sort of politics, and as such you got a politicians answer!
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Haha!
I think I actually got a cut and paste answer - the text looks like it was copied in blocks from various documents and pasted in. I’m guessing a low ranking office junior with a fancy title.
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Think so
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UPDATE:
Email reply sent this afternoon to their Outdoor & Natural Resource team.
Lets see where this goes 
Good afternoon Franchesca,
It’s now been six months since our last correspondence and I was wondering if you had any updates regarding the National Trust UAV/Drone policy and its stated intention to review the updated CAA regulations on drone use and the wording on its website, which incidentally I notice hasn’t changed since my initial email back on February 2nd of this year.
Is it still the National Trust stance that they are sticking with their outdated and legally unenforceable bylaw and trying to ban the overflight of their land or has its policy been reviewed by its legal team but not got around to updating its website?
I very much look forward to hearing from you
Kind regards
Phil
Essex on Film
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I had a response to my email to them, which I’ve already replied to telling them that I’ll be flying anyway over their property which is perfectly legal as they don’t control air space, which seems to be beyond them.
"Thank you for your email regarding our drone policy.
Thank you for bringing it to our attention that we need to update our web pages and that our policy is out of date and therefore will be ignored. This is something we are aware of and are working to a full review of our position before the new drone registration comes into force later in 2019. Your comments will be taken into account as part of this review.
The confusing situation at the moment is that CAA regulations and land owner legislation give two conflicting views. We are governed by land owner legislation and this conflicts with the CAA regulations that you quote. There is no case law on this and the two sets of legislation conflict. Landowner legislation is here - Open access land: management, rights and responsibilities - GOV.UK
Our byelaws cover everything in our ownership and are accessible via the internet site - https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/documents/the-national-trust-byelaws-1965.pdf
The key one is para 11 (iii) in association with sub clause b. It means that no one can drive a vehicle on or above our land. It states that people need permission to do things on our land. We would contend that drones occupy similar airspace to hang gliding and paragliding so would cover drones too.
Complicated, but not impossible. We will be working towards a solution but in the mean time I will make sure we update our website so that we are giving the right messages with the right tone of voice.
Thank again for your email.
Kind regards,
Vicki
T Outdoors and Natural Resources Team
ONRenquiries@nationaltrust.org.uk
National Trust, Heelis, Kemble Drive, Swindon, SN2 2NA
"
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Is it just me that thinks rather than poking the bear, leave it as is. Just fly over when it’s closed/not busy (depending if a property or just open space) if you really really must fly over their property.
There’s educating and there’s pissing someone off so much they actually go out and get some some form of landmark ruling, everyone else follows suit and we find places to fly are even more difficult than ever.
Not that they’d ever be able to police it.
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I don’t consider it poking the bare. I call it abiding by the rules and regulations. If I want to fly over a National Trust property at 120ft after taking off from public land at 2 pm on a Sunday afternoon I want to do exactly that if I’m legally allowed to and I’m abiding by the Drone Code regulations. I will not have anyone telling me I can’t do something when I’m perfectly within the law to do it.
Also, the ‘oh just do as they say’ attitude is partly to blame for why they have got away with it for so long without anyone questioning it and why the drone community, by and large, has such a bad name amongst the general public. If the National Trust says it’s against the law on their website then surely it must be. That’s the way joe public reads it.
The only way we as a responsible recreational community will be accepted and treated as such by the wider public is by education. That starts first and foremost with institutional bodies such as the National Trust and English Heritage. When they accept they cannot just dictate what we can and cannot do in the airspace above their land that will go at least some way to changing the hearts and minds of those that see UAV flying as a dangerous nuisance.
And that isn’t even touching, on the whole, sticking up for one’s rights issue. If there was or is justification for the banning of overflight of their properties then I would be 100% behind any changes in legislation but there isn’t.
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Completely agree. They seem to want to dictate laws that don’t exist just because they think they do. They seem beyond educating.
With the likes of the National Trust when the majority of it is just land especially if you look at the likes of the the Yorkshire moors that also includes coast line it is just land.
Obviously if there was some actual reason such as at Malam Cove where they have endangered birds breading then it should be a no fly zone around that area and its that level of approach that they should be taking to high light locations like that and not a blanket ban that they can’t enforce legally or practically.
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That’s not what I implied.
Hence I said not busy/closed (drone code - crowds, research before flying over blah blah blah)
You’re right, we don’t need to tell them what we are doing, we are abiding by the law, so lets just get on with it.
Out of interest I see you do radio? Have you considered approaching any of the UK based Drone podcasts to talk about this, and maybe see if they can get someone from NT/EH to even go on it.
Surprised Grey Arrows don’t do a podcast to be honest, but that’s a tangent.
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Apologies if that’s the case. That’s how I took it
The radio I do is very specific to jazz, funk, soul, and dance music so a drone operators interview wouldn’t really fit 
GADC has a great reputation and is well known and respected within the drone operators community. I would really like it if someone on the admin/ownership side took up the correspondence cudgel on this. I feel it would hold a lot more weight with the likes of the NT and EH, amongst others.
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To play devils advocate it they turned round and said, nope the stance remains would you settle it there and accept?
Better would be the official organisations having a go.
BMFA or FPUK
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I grew up skating and drone fliers do face a lot of the same opinions from laymen that skaters do. The thing we learned was that arguing with people and antagonising only makes it worse, even if you are right a lot of people simply refuse to change their opinion or stance and arguing your point only makes them push back harder, sometimes you just have to take a bump and graciously move on. We found behaving in that way peoples attitudes towards us changed significantly and we would get bothered less.
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