What various legislation does the CAA derive authority and guidance from?
Primarily the Civil Aviation Act and the subsidary Air Navigation Order.
Also, CAA is answerable to the DfT who hold the ultimate reigns.
The functions charged to the CAA by the legislation?
The first line of the ANO is quite telling, it says "An aeroplane may not fly unless...". The CAA's role is to define all of the exceptions.
However, if you want a general list, it is:-
- Certifying civil aircraft and their equipment
- Approving companies with civil aviation functions and their key staff.
- Licencing aviation professionals
- Jointly with MoD and Eurocontrol, managing UK airspace.
The Core Operational Divisions and Departments of the CAA Safety Regulation Group?
You'll get that off the CAA's website. Probably nobody outside the CAA can give you a complete answer, since none of us deal with the whole breadth of the organisation. Personally I deal with personnel licencing, projects, GA and flight test. I also deal with "legal and enforcement" who aren't part of SRG, but are part of CAA.
The Role of the CAA in the work of the JAA and EASA?
The two answers are quite different. JAA is/was a gentlemen's club of authorities agreeing through discussion standards which were then implemented, in their own ways, by each NAA (National Airworthiness Authority) such as UK-CAA. CAA was a member of this club, although a big and influentual one.
EASA is a European authority, and so far as activities not excluded from EASA's remit (such as, for example, historic aircraft) acts simply as an EASA regional office.
Finally:-
my University degree is Aircraft Engineering with Pilot Studies, and so we are given ground schooling to ATPL standard
I'm pretty certain I know the course since I have just started doing some part time teaching on it. Don't compare yourself to ATPL, that's comparing apples and pears. ATPL groundschool assumes none of the school maths and physics you had and basically takes 6 months full time - or in other words about 1/5th of what you've done. Alternatively the subject coverage has very little commonality with your degree - so an ATPL will have learned huge amounts about aviation that you have, as-yet, little clue about. So basically what you did was bigger and probably harder and to a higher standard, but also totally different in most respects and certainly many subjects in the ATPL are covered to a far greater depth than you'll have covered (if you covered them at-all, I'd be surprised for-example if you came across any mention of climatology).
Bottom line of-course is that an engineering graduate is of little use on a flight deck, and an ATPL wouldn't have a clue in an aeronautical engineering department. This puts neither down, they are trained to high and necessary levels in completely different areas. Your pilot studies will have given you significant insights, but that was only to PPL level - a couple of weeks grounschool versus 6 months.
G