Dear FOI Officer,
I am seeking information under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and, where relevant, the Environmental Information Regulations 2004, regarding State-aircraft (police) drone operations and the accident notification system.
- Please confirm whether the Isle of Sheppey incident of 2 August 2025, involving a Kent Police drone striking an overhead cable and injuring a child, was formally notified to the AAIB or CAA.
- Provide the date and reference number of any such notification and whether a safety investigation was opened.
- Supply the guidance or memorandum of understanding that governs incident notification and investigation responsibilities for State-aircraft (police) drones.
- Provide any statistical summaries or anonymised MOR data (Mandatory Occurrence Reports) concerning police-UAS accidents between 2023 and 2025.
Electronic response preferred.
Yours faithfully,
Richard Ryan
Barrister, Mediator & International Arbitrator
+447867807008
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Dear NPCC UAS Lead,
Following recent reporting of a police-operated UAS incident (serious injury to a child) and separate references to DFR/BVLOS trials within TDAs, I would be grateful for responses to the following points in the public interest. Please answer for NPCC policy and, where possible, provide force-level data or references to current guidance.
A. Safety governance, State-aircraft status, and “just culture”
- Framework: Under your State-aircraft arrangements, what documented Safety Management System (SMS) and occurrence reporting standards apply to police UAS operations nationwide? Please share the current NPCC UAS safety governance policy (or confirm document titles and locations if public).
- Equivalence: How do you ensure equivalent safety outcomes to the civil regime (had operations fallen under UK-retained Reg. 2019/947/CAP 722)?
- Just culture: What formal just-culture policy protects candid safety reporting while ensuring accountability? How is this implemented and audited across forces?
B. Occurrence reporting & accident investigation
- Mandatory notifications: For public-injury events, which body is notified (AAIB or other competent State-aircraft investigation authority)? What is the trigger threshold and timescale?
- Statistics: In the last 36 months, how many UAS occurrences involving injury or significant property damage were recorded by police forces? Please provide counts by severity, force, and whether a public report/learning bulletin was issued.
- Learning dissemination: What is the process and cadence for publishing anonymised safety lessons to the wider UAS community?
C. The Isle of Sheppey incident (2 August 2025)
- Notifications & preservation: Was the incident notified to the competent accident investigation body? Were raw flight logs, controller logs, and video preserved using a tamper-evident process?
- Causation factors: Did your internal analysis identify technical factors (e.g., geofencing, return-to-home logic, obstacle sensing), human factors (workload, visibility, training), or procedural gaps (site survey, overhead line identification) as causal or contributory?
- Public update: When will you publish a redacted lessons-learned summary covering risk mitigations implemented post-incident?
D. Data integrity, evidence, and misconduct prevention
- Deletion controls: What technical controls prevent operational personnel from deleting or altering mission footage/telemetry (e.g., write-once storage, automatic cloud offload, audit logs)?
- Audit & sanctions: How are audit trails reviewed, and what are the sanction pathways where evidence tampering is suspected?
E. Training, competence, and currency
- Standards: What are the minimum training/competency standards for police UAS pilots/observers, including BVLOS/DFR roles? Please provide the syllabus outline (air law, airspace, HF, emergency procedures, obstacle/power-line hazards).
- Currency checks: What recency and proficiency checks apply (e.g., periodic check rides, scenario-based training, simulator time)?
- Human factors: How is HF/CRM embedded and assessed in line with best practice from NPAS or civil aviation?
F. BVLOS/DFR trials and Temporary Danger Areas (TDAs)
- Legal basis & proportionality: What is the legal basis for the BVLOS/DFR surveillance concept over built-up areas, and how is necessity and proportionality assessed (incl. DPIA and retention periods for collected imagery)?
- Airspace impact: Prior to establishing TDAs (e.g., London, Coventry), what stakeholder consultations were undertaken with other UAS operators and how was economic impact (lost commercial operations) considered and mitigated?
- Deconfliction: What strategic and tactical deconfliction measures (procedural and technical) are used with other airspace users (manned and unmanned) inside/near TDAs?
- Public transparency: Will NPCC publish a public summary of each TDA trial’s safety case, mitigations, performance outcomes, and lessons learned?
G. Equipment, technical mitigations, and insurance
- Technical mitigations: What minimum equipment/automation standards apply (obstacle sensing, power-line awareness tools, geofencing parameters, lost-link logic, conspicuity, remote ID where applicable)?
- Insurance & redress: What public-liability arrangements cover injuries/damages arising from police UAS operations, and how is redress communicated to affected members of the public?
I would welcome a written response within 30 days. If any answers turn on documents not publicly available, please indicate whether they can be shared in redacted form or summarised.
Yours faithfully,
Richard Ryan
Barrister, Mediator & International Arbitrator
+447867807008
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We need to keep an eye on what the NPCC is upto, there is plainly a power struggle between them and the CAA at the moment. The CAA clearly has a mandate to ensure the safety of all airspace users.
The NPCC seem to be using DJI Docks and Matrice, so there’s a data privacy flag right out of the box! (See what I did there). Chinese comms in the heart of control rooms. Paging Huawei, paging Huawei.
It was really Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC) for Wiltshire, Philip Wilkinson who last week caught my attention, saying “Some of the most advanced drone systems are going to be built in Swindon, and that’s why I’m determined to have British drones for British police forces.”
He said that in the week of the canned Islington DFR trial. Perhaps Mr Wilkinson has news of a DJI factory opening up in Swindon?
The National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) Drones as First Responder (DFR) programme is an initiative within the wider NPCC Drones Portfolio, focusing on leveraging technology to enhance public safety and police response. The DFR concept is essentially the deployment of remotely operated ‘drones in boxes’ from strategically located stations, primarily on rooftops, to arrive swiftly at the scene of an incident.
Superintendent Taryn Evans serves as the Strategic Lead for the NPCC Drones team and the Strategic Lead for UK Policing’s BVLOS Pathway Programme. She has been responsible for the national Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) programme for policing for just over a year as of June 2025.
The DFR concept was initially supported by a multi-million-pound scheme, announced by the former Chancellor Jeremy Hunt, which proposed spending £230M rolling out time and money saving technology, including using drones as first responders.
The core objective of DFR is to provide near-immediate situational awareness directly into police control rooms, which can help commanders determine the best tools, tactics, and resources needed, often before officers arrive.
• Initial Simulation (Summer 2023): The first trial was led by Hampshire and Isle of Wight Constabulary (HIOWC) and Thames Valley Police (TVP) at the Isle of Wight Festival, where a simulated DFR capability was deployed alongside routine police drones.
This looks like a Herotech8 box, I am happy to be corrected.
• Project Eagle X (2024): This was cited as the first wide scale DFR trial in the UK, undertaken by Norfolk Police. Norwich was selected as an ideal test site because it currently has limited access to the National Police Air Service (NPAS) helicopters due to ‘proximity’.
• Norwich Demonstration (July/August 2024): A demonstration was held at the University of East Anglia (UEA) in Norwich, where a drone housed in a rooftop box was deployed to search for a man playing the role of a missing person, beaming back real-time imagery to an officer in a nearby police van. Norfolk Police initially planned for up to five drone sites to cover the entire city.
• Expanding Trial Sites: The trials have explored “every combination and innovation in Drone in a Box technology” across four pioneering trial sites. These locations include Norwich, Southampton, the West Midlands, and Gravesend.
◦ Norwich focused primarily on drone safety, connectivity, and integrating drone parachutes.
◦ Southampton focused on integration with the Department for Transport’s Solent Future Transport Zone project, testing feeds from radar and other detection equipment to facilitate safe BVLOS use.
◦ Gravesend and the West Midlands focused on feeding DFR video into control rooms, linking it with systems like number plate recognition, and using DFR in motorway, public order, and firearms incidents.
• Operational Integration (2025): The British Transport Police (BTP) became the first police force to operationalise remote ‘drone in a box’ technology in May 2025. By July 2025, Cleveland Constabulary had become the fifth force to adopt DFR technology, building on the success of earlier sites in Norwich, Southampton, London, and Coventry.
The widespread expectation is that DFR drones will “assist with area searches, road incidents, issues in town centres, public order incidents and the night-time economy”. However, the project is expected to undergo another two or three years of trials and analysis before becoming an operational part of police kit across the country.
One of the four pioneering DFR trial sites, Southampton, focused specifically on testing radar and other detection equipment.
• The trials in Southampton were integrated with the Department for Transport’s Solent Future Transport Zone project.
• These trials involved testing feeds from radar and other aircraft and drone detection equipment that facilitate the safe use of BVLOS drones.
• The Hampshire & Isle of Wight Constabulary (HIOWC) and Thames Valley Police (TVP) collaboration utilized a mobile radar station.
• This mobile radar station involved the latest Sparrowhawk radar system installation, supported by the Sparrowhawk team and Chris Stagg.
Superintendent Taryn Evans has provided clarity on the DFR programme’s objectives and progress, emphasising its role in augmenting, rather than replacing, human officers.
On the purpose of DFR, Supt Evans stated:
“We don’t anticipate this replacing officers or the response they give to emergency calls in anyway whatsoever. What we do hope to see is that gives them enhanced advantage in working out how to respond to those same calls. It might be that there’s a risk there that wasn’t reported to us by the people that called in that we need to be aware of and we would send different units there to deal with that accordingly”.
Reflecting on the progress of the trials, she noted:
“The Norfolk trial is an important showcase of just how effective DFR can be at supporting our response to 999 calls, arriving on scene quickly and giving invaluable ‘eyes in the sky’”.
She further detailed the benefit of running multiple trials:
“Each trial enables us to test how DFR could work in different environments and support different operational purposes, enhancing both public and officer safety”.
In a June 2025 update, Supt Evans highlighted the advancements made, particularly how the DFR trials are becoming integrated into routine policing:
“Our DFR trials have gathered significant pace over the last year with each one testing out how we can best exploit the potential of drones to support policing and improve the safety of our communities. This latest trial shows how DFR integrates with ‘business as usual’ policing. The drone can be remotely deployed from the control room as a key resource in responding to incidents, supporting both community and officer safety”.
She also acknowledged the significant contributions of drone pilots to the programme’s success:
“None of it would be possible without our extended network of professional pilots who give their time and expertise freely, often in between long and tiring shifts, all because they want to see this technology embedded in policing with the purpose of protecting their communities and their colleagues”.
The use of drones by dedicated pilots resulted in high deployment numbers for a recent six-month period
(October 1, 2024 – March 31, 2025), which Supt Evans noted included:
• 26,584 deployments over 8,953 minutes.
• 721 suspects located.
• 649 missing people located.
• 163 vehicles located.
Supt Evans is focused on ensuring the adoption of this technology is safe, stating that the project is “working very closely with the National Police Chiefs’ Council and the Home Office to make sure that we have a safe operating model for beyond line of sight drone as a drone responder”
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