A new company to help regulate the safety of civil aviation in the UK's Overseas Territories* has been set up by the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) under Directions from the Department for Transport (DfT).

The company, a CAA subsidiary known as Air Safety Support International (ASSI), will help provide more cohesive and prominent oversight of aviation in the Overseas Territories. It will be responsible for supporting their existing civil aviation authorities in the safety regulation of all aspects of civil aviation, including the licensing of personnel and airports and the certification of aircraft, airlines, and air traffic control.

The DfT’s Transport Minister, John Spellar, added: "The Territories already work hard in this challenging field and take their responsibilities seriously. The new arrangements build on those efforts and will help the Territories to ensure high levels of safety. They will also enable the UK to demonstrate full compliance with our international obligations."

Richard Profit, Group Director of the CAA’s Safety Regulation Group, explained: "A safety audit of the UK by the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) raised a number of issues over the UK’s supervision of regulation in the territories. The establishment of ASSI will address these areas and support the provision of first-class regulatory oversight."

The Governor in each Territory will retain overall responsibility for safety regulation of its aviation industry, but will delegate this to either the existing local Government body or to ASSI or, in some cases, the existing local Government body with assistance from ASSI.

ASSI will begin operations on 1 April 2003 and will work from offices in West Sussex in the UK and an operational base in Antigua. At least nine of its 26 staff are expected to be based outside the UK.

Initially the majority of the company’s expert staff will be seconded from the CAA, while support staff based in Antigua may well be recruited locally. ASSI will be run as a not-for-profit company funded by the DfT with its Chairman appointed by the CAA. The Chief Executive post has been advertised for open competition.

For further information please contact Jonathan Nicholson on 020 7453 6027.

International civil aviation is governed by the 1944 Convention on International Civil Aviation - 'the Chicago Convention'. The Convention obliges contracting states to regulate their industries in accordance with the standards and recommended practices established by the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO). The Overseas Territories are not contracting states in their own right but are considered to be part of the UK for the purposes of the Convention.

The UK was audited under ICAO’s Universal Aviation Safety Oversight Audit Programme in July 2000. This looked at the UK’s regulation of aircraft, airlines and licensed personnel and included a visit to two of the Territories. In the report of the audit ICAO recommended that the UK should exercise greater oversight of aviation safety regulatory activities in the territories.

The Civil Aviation Authority (Overseas Territories) Directions 2003 were issued under section 6 of the Civil Aviation Act 1982.

*The Overseas Territories covered by ASSI are: Anguilla, Bermuda, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Falkland Islands, Gibraltar, Montserrat, St Helena and Dependencies, and The Turks and Caicos Islands. In the future, ASSI's remit will be extended to other Territories which commence civil aviation activities.

Lee Hazell from:

Falklands Quote by the Director of Civil Aviation, Mr. Andrew Newman (AN): "In the short term I don’t believe that we will see any affects of the new company. It’s going to take them some time to get established and actually have any presence in any of the Overseas Territories. In the long term, it will see us getting visits by various inspectors on all the facets of our aviation and subsequent reports and recommendations will have to be dealt with as best we can to maintain our present state of aviation regulations.

LH: But how and what could it affect?

AN: It could affect any part of our aviation business, which is a register of aircraft that we currently have – FIGAS, BAS and private aircraft – the way we operate in the Falkland Islands with Camp airstrips and with the presence of then Military on the Falkland Islands – possibly, to some extent, the way BAS operate in the British Antarctic Territories – aviation security – every facet of aviation that we have to regulate will be looked at in some detail in the forthcoming years.

LH: Do you envisage any responsibility being delegated to the new company?

AN: Hopefully not. I am sure that we will do everything that we can to protect the system of aviation regulation that we already have in place, which allows us to have the transport infrastructure that we have in aviation and carry out all the duties that we do with aircraft in the Falkland Islands and aircraft that visit the Falkland Islands. Any changes to that, I am sure, will only be for a short time if we have to draw upon the resources and expertise of the new company. And, I am sure that we would look at having it return to the Falkland Islands as soon as possible so that we may look after our own aviation industry and regulate it as safely and professionally as we have since the beginning of aviation in the Falkland Islands. This is not unlike the situation that has developed in the maritime industry which has been going on for some years now, which has affected the Falkland Islands in how we register ships and security on ships and safety standards on ships, fishing and cargo, etc. The Falkland Islands Government has already had to deal with that in connection with Byron Marine and the Maritime agencies.