The airspace surrounding Queen Elizabeth II's Windsor Castle residence in Berkshire, south-east England, will become a no-fly zone for security reasons from later this month, the British police said on Tuesday.
Following a public consultation by the local Thames Valley Police and the Metropolitan Police Service and an application to the UK's Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), the "restricted airspace order" was approved for Windsor.
The development comes in the wake of a recent security breach of the 95-year-old monarch's grounds by a British Sikh teenager, being held under the UK's Mental Health Act after being caught with a crossbow last month.
"The order restricts the use of airspace up to 2,500ft within a 1.25 nautical mile radius around Windsor Castle and will come into effect from 27 January 2022. Any flights within the restricted area will require authorisation,” the Thames Valley Police said.
"Unless someone has an exemption or prior permission, anyone who breaches the restrictions faces prosecution. This order is an additional method to keep the community living near to this iconic location safe. Officers already carry out regular patrols in the area to provide reassurance along with a range of other security measures,” the police said.
The Metropolitan Police said the application to the CAA was part of an ongoing review into security arrangements and not because of any specific threat or intelligence.
A social media video, reviewed by the Met Police, had emerged after the Christmas Day breach of the castle grounds in which a masked man identifying himself as Indian Sikh Jaswant Singh Chail says he wanted to "assassinate" the Queen as revenge for the Jallianwala Bagh massacre in Amritsar in 1919.
The incident marked the fifth person to have caused a security scare at Windsor Castle in the past nine months and was caught on CCTV by security officers on the grounds.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
