The CAA Could Soon Be Able to Write Aviation Law Directly

If you work with UK drone regulation, there is a change going through Parliament that could eventually affect where you find the rules, who writes them and how quickly they can be changed.

The Civil Aviation (Consumer Protection and Regulatory Reform) Bill would give the CAA the power to make legally binding aviation rules directly.

The proposal applies across aviation, not specifically to drones. Its purpose is much wider, covering the way the UK maintains technical aviation law after leaving the EU. The UAS framework is still a useful place to see what the change could mean in practice because so much of it currently relies on legislation inherited from the European system.

How the system works now

Much of the detailed UK aviation rulebook still sits in legislation, including the Air Navigation Order and regulations inherited from the EU framework. Those rules cover subjects such as flight crew licensing, airworthiness, aircraft operations and unmanned aircraft.

The CAA administers those requirements and produces the material used alongside them, including Acceptable Means of Compliance, Guidance Material and CAP publications. Their legal status is different: a requirement in a Regulation or the Air Navigation Order is law, AMC provides a recognised way of complying with a requirement, GM helps explain the rules or AMC, and CAP publications contain various forms of guidance, policy and technical material.

If the CAA wants to change guidance, it can usually do that through its own processes. Where the underlying requirement is fixed in legislation, Government may need to amend it through a statutory instrument. That distinction is central to the proposed reform.

Why is this being changed?

Before Brexit, a large part of the UK's technical aviation framework was maintained through the EASA and EU rulemaking system. The UK retained much of that legislation when it left the EU, but responsibility for keeping the UK version up to date then moved back to this country.

A technical amendment which previously went through the European regulatory process can now require the CAA to develop the change and the Department for Transport to turn it into legislation. Ministers have argued during the Bill's passage that this arrangement is slow and resource intensive, particularly for a regulatory system containing large numbers of detailed technical requirements which change regularly.

The Bill would allow Parliament and Government to continue setting the overall statutory framework while giving the CAA responsibility for making more of the detailed technical rules within it. Those requirements could sit in a new CAA Rulebook and, unlike AMC, GM or ordinary guidance, would have legal force.

A drone example we have already seen

The recent changes to the UK UAS framework show how the current process works.

The CAA carried out a wider review of UK drone regulation, including the Open category, class marking and remote pilot competence. Some of the requirements it wanted to change were contained in UK Regulation 2019/947 and 2019/945, which meant the CAA could develop the policy, consult and decide what it thought the rules should say, but could not amend the Regulations itself.

The legal changes were eventually made by Government through the Unmanned Aircraft (Amendment) Regulations 2025. That statutory instrument amended both 2019/947 and 2019/945, with major changes applying from 1st January 2026. One of the subjects covered was the treatment of EU class-marked aircraft in the UK during the transition to UK class marking.

There is good reason to consult properly on changes like these. The difficulty comes after the technical work has been completed because, if the requirement sits in legislation, the CAA's decision cannot take legal effect until that legislation is amended.

The earlier extension of the legacy UAS transitional arrangements is an even simpler example. The CAA decided that transitional provisions approaching their original expiry should continue until 1st January 2026, but because those dates were written into legislation, the Regulations still had to be amended before the new date had legal effect.

If an equivalent provision eventually sat in the CAA Rulebook, the CAA could amend the legal rule through its own statutory rulemaking process. Consultation, justification and the procedures set by Parliament would still apply, but a separate statutory instrument from Government would not necessarily be needed simply to put the CAA's completed technical decision into law.

What happens to AMC, GM and CAPs?

AMC, GM and CAP publications would not automatically become law under the Bill. The new power would create a separate category of legally binding material in the form of CAA Rules.

AMC could continue to provide an accepted means of complying with a CAA Rule, GM could continue to explain the regulatory material, and CAP publications could continue to carry guidance, policy and technical information.

That means material published by the same regulator could carry different legal weight. A CAA Rule would contain a binding requirement, while an AMC sitting alongside it could describe one accepted way of satisfying that requirement. The distinction already exists today between legislation and CAA material, but under the proposed system the CAA could also become the author of the binding rule.

What happens to today's aviation regulations?

Existing aviation regulations would not disappear as soon as the new powers came into force. The Bill provides the legal machinery for requirements to be transferred, restated or consolidated over time, so UK aviation could operate for a period with existing Regulations and the Air Navigation Order alongside newer CAA Rules.

The eventual contents and structure of the Rulebook have not yet been published. Its potential scope is broad because the Bill reaches into areas currently covered by the Air Navigation Order and legislation made under the UK Basic Regulation.

How does this compare internationally?

Other aviation regulators already have direct rulemaking powers. Australia is a useful comparison because CASA can make legally binding technical requirements through instruments such as Manuals of Standards beneath the wider aviation legislation.

The FAA in the United States also makes detailed federal aviation regulations under authority delegated by Congress and publishes separate advisory material to help regulated organisations comply.

The UK has traditionally relied more heavily on Government legislation for this layer of technical regulation. The Bill would move some of that work to the CAA.

What could this mean for drones?

There is no published CAA UAS Rulebook yet, so any discussion of its eventual structure is necessarily speculative.

At present, UK UAS regulation is spread across Regulation 2019/947, Regulation 2019/945, the Basic Regulation, the Air Navigation Order and CAA material. The Specific category also relies on UK SORA, PDRAs, AMC and GM, remote pilot competence requirements and related CAP publications.

If parts of that framework were transferred into the CAA Rulebook, some requirements currently written into 2019/947 could instead become CAA Rules. Depending on how the CAA chose to structure them, those rules could cover areas such as operator responsibilities, operational authorisations, remote pilot requirements or other parts of the Specific category, with AMC, GM and CAP material continuing to provide the supporting detail.

UK SORA is one area where the difference could become noticeable. The CAA can already revise its own SORA material and its AMC or GM through CAA processes, but if the development of that framework requires something written into 2019/947 to change, guidance cannot alter the Regulation and Government may have to amend the law.

If that requirement had already been transferred into the CAA Rulebook, the CAA could instead amend the binding rule through the rulemaking procedure created by the Bill. The same could apply to future changes involving remote pilot competence, PDRAs or other parts of the Specific category.

There is no confirmed plan yet showing which UAS requirements would move into the Rulebook, which would remain in existing legislation, or how CAP 722 and the AMC/GM structure would sit around the new rules. Parliament is currently considering the legal powers that would allow that work to happen later.

For drone users, the practical difference is that the CAA currently has much more direct control over changes to CAP 722, AMC and GM than it does over requirements written into legislation such as 2019/947. If the Bill becomes law and those requirements are later transferred into the CAA Rulebook, the CAA could make more of those technical legal changes through its own rulemaking process instead of requiring Government to amend the legislation first.