Legal reporting
Model flying is covered by many of the legal requirements
relating to full-size regarding reporting of incidents. And
the Article 16 authorisation adds some specific requirements.
In short any injury, serious incident (=high risk of injury
occurring) or other occurrence (=anything dodgy) which involved
flight above 400ft, within 50m of uninvolved people, or a model
that flew out of line of sight must now be reported to one of the
AAIB/CAA
If you think something might need to be reported, the first
place to start is the BMFA's portal which will tell you what, if
anything, needs to be done based on the answers to a few
questions: https://reporting.bmfa.uk/
Further information about the law is on the BMFA's Mandatory
Occurrence Reporting page: https://rcc.bmfa.uk/art16-occurrence-reporting
Club occurrence reporting
As well as any legal reporting of incidents, the club encourages
all members to report to the committee both any events you have
concerns about, or any situation that you think could be a safety
problem - even if nothing has happened yet. We would stress
this is not just flying related - and in fact almost all issues in
the past that have needed action have not been flying related
(leaking gas hob; people tripping over various obstructions;
etc)
You can, of course, tell a committee member, but we also have a
form that can be used:
PDF version
Excel version
If you fill this in and send it to any committee member it will
always be discussed at the next committee meeting. It can be
filled in anonymously and posted to the Chairman, although it's
more useful if we can discuss it with the author.
Safeguarding issues
Although it is not so likely in our environment, if anyone has
any concerns regarding the treatment of children or vulnerable
adults, it should be reported in the first instance to the club
welfare officer, currently Colin Martin.
