Drone Surveys & Aerial Inspection Imagery in Bath

No. Listed building consent exists to control physical alteration to a listed building, and photographing it from the air alters nothing: there is no fixing, no contact and no scaffolding involved, which is one of the reasons aerial imagery suits Bath so well. What still applies is everything unrelated to the listing. I need the landowner's permission for wherever I take off and land, I have to respect privacy and any council byelaws on the ground I launch from, and the airspace rules apply the same as anywhere. If your building is in the care of a trust or an institution there may be internal permissions to sort out, and that is worth checking before the visit rather than on the day. I am giving you the practical position from flying here rather than legal advice, so if there is any doubt about your specific property, your conservation officer is the right person to confirm it.

I can photograph it thoroughly without scaffolding, which is usually what people mean when they ask. A flight gets you high-resolution stills and 4K video of the slates, the parapet, the box and valley gutters, the lead work and the stacks, from angles that no ladder position offers. What it cannot do is replace hands on the fabric: nobody can lift a slate, probe a joint or test whether mortar is sound from the air. In practice the imagery either shows the problem clearly enough to price a repair, or it shows exactly where somebody needs to go up, which means the access you eventually pay for is targeted rather than speculative.

Bath has no airport of its own, so there is no permanent airport Flight Restriction Zone sitting over the city in the way there is near Bristol Airport. That makes it easier than Bristol, but it does not make it a free-for-all. The whole centre is a congested built-up area, which sets what the drone may do and how close it may be flown to people who are not part of the job. Events, road closures and gatherings can bring temporary restrictions or safety notices for a specific date, and there are always tall structures, cranes and trees to plan around in a city this dense. So I check the current restrictions and notices for your address and date before quoting rather than relying on the drone's built-in map, which can be out of date.

Partly by aircraft choice and partly by timing. I fly a sub-249g DJI Mini 5 Pro, and under the current CAA rules a drone that light is permitted to operate in residential, commercial and recreational areas and closer to uninvolved people than a heavier machine, which is what makes a central Bath job possible at all. I never fly over a crowd, regardless of the drone's weight. On busy streets I plan short, purposeful flights, often early in the morning before the pavements fill, keep the aircraft in sight throughout, stay within the 120m height limit, and use a private launch point such as a garden, courtyard or yard rather than a public pavement.

Bath is roughly an hour from me in Weston-super-Mare, so it is comfortably within my normal patch and there is no travel charge for it. I can usually offer a date within a few days and edited imagery follows within 48 hours of the flight. On the second question: no, I am not a surveyor. I am a CAA-licensed drone photographer, so I produce imagery, 4K video and 3D visual capture, and your surveyor, architect or conservation specialist is the person who interprets it and takes responsibility for that judgement. A good share of my Bath work is commissioned by exactly those professionals, and I am happy to shoot to a brief they set.