Club Safety

All club members should read and understand the Club Safety Plan, which follows Paddle UK (formerly British Canoeing) safety management guidance.

To simplify the process of organising and running trips, we have also written a Local Waters Risk Assessment, which covers trips on the Thames (Isleworth to Chertsey lock), The Wey Navigation and the Basingstoke Canal.

Also, please see the separate operating framework for Sea Kayaking.

Many trips and events undertaken over the last few years have risk assessments which can be re-used and which can be found on the Club’s Google drive. If you are going to lead a trip and need access, ask a committee member

Extract from the Paddle UK document

At the heart of health and safety and indeed safety management in general is ‘Risk Assessment’. Mention of the words ‘Risk Assessment’ conjures up all sorts of images in people’s minds, and central to this is dread and fear. Dread at the mere thought of having to undertake the work, fear at the thought of the essence of our sport being eroded by society’s desire to remove risk from everything that moves. We need to achieve an acceptable balance in terms of safety management. It is clear to us all that we have a duty of care to others with whom we come into contact. We can only be sure that we are meeting that duty if we take steps to analyse the risks involved while participating in canoeing events and activities. That said, we do need to keep things in perspective. We are all driven by a desire to take part, compete, or assist others in doing so, and rightly so, given that we do so (in the main) voluntarily, we wish to see such opportunities maximised. Spending lots of time on administration is often seen as counter productive and as such never makes it to the top of the Urgent and Important file. Nonetheless ensuring that we address the issue of safe participation is important – risk assessment is fundamental to this. We can keep it in perspective, if we understand the fundamentals of risk assessment and are able to be efficient, comprehensive and concise when carrying out risk assessments

All club members should read and understand the Club Safety Plan, which follows Paddle UK safety management guidance.