Posted By Jennifer Kelly Not sure how to deal with this and advise the organisation I work for, a children's charity, so any opinions and thoughts would be very welcome. Apologies for the length of this posting but it has all happened in quite a convoluted way. Every now and again we organise weekend residentials for children who use our services. The most popular type of weekends are, unsurprisingly, at activity centres where children get to try out a range of adventure activities. Ever since the Lyme Bay tragedy these type of activity centres have been licensed by a statutory body called the Adventure Activities Licensing Authority (AALA) (linked to the HSE) who risk assess each centre and issue a license once satisfied with how operations are run. The activity centre that has been selected for this weekend is licensed under this scheme - so far so straightforward. Anyway, as part of our overall risk assessment and document check for our organisation, the person organising the weekend has asked to see the AALA risk assessment only to be told by the centre manager the following by email: "It is very inadvisable to ask for risk assessments because it immediately puts your organisation at risk. Even County organisers and inspectors deliberately do not ask to view risk assessments. They do ask if we have them for all the activities that we offer. The reason for this is that if you admit to seeing risk assessments you immediately take on a share of the responsibility without having any experience of the set up of the centre. The AALA inspectors do look at Risk Assessments. Please find AALA details on our website under SITE INDEX" The manager then went onto say, "However, we do publish risk assessments on our website so that people may view them without having to admit that they have done so." I called the centre manager up and queried this, only to be told that this was advice from the AALA. So I called up the AALA for more information. They agreed with what the centre manager had told me, although they felt it had been expressed rather crudely. They then directed me to AALA website for more information and I duly had a look through it only to read that the AALA do NOT license ALL operations being run at a particular centre, only those which are deemed to be high risk. So safety arrangements for caving activities would be checked but not the safety arrangements for rope activities. Equally a check would not be made to see that a Fire Risk Assessment had been undertaken for the centre or that First Aid arrangements were suitable and sufficient. So I rang the AALA back to say that whilst I understood that only certain activities were checked by the AALA and that we could be assured that these activities were being managed safely - how do we as an organisation check on other risk issues that could affect us? Guess what?? I was told to check with the centre in question and ask whether their risk assessment that covered these issues!! So what do I make of this?? Is asking for a risk assessment really putting our organisation at risk of a shared liability? Surely we would be liable if we did not ask to see the centre's risk assessment and verify what is and isn't covered in order to arrange appropriate control measures? Isn't this type of cloak and dagger approach to risk management being sanctioned by the AALA a very unhealthy and confusing way in which to manage health & safety issues? Any thoughts would be most welcome. Jennifer

Posted By Bob Thompson CMIOSH Hi Jenifer I would have thought that it was imperative to have sight of the Risk assessments, it may well be that as a childrens charity you have kids participating in activities with special needs in terms of mobility behaviour etc. without the information on the centres R/A how can you effectively conduct your own. As for the centre I would have thought they would need sight of your own R/A and have discussions, in order to dovetail all the relevant information. We send kids of all capabilities on all sorts of activities and have a very strict policy on Risk assessment and the need for discussions and agreement between any centres we use. Kind regards Bob

Posted By Simon Shaw Some time ago I was involved in the arrangements of a residential activity event for a team from work - as a team building event. We carried out our own risk assessment for the whole event. I visited the activity centre and met with staff there. I asked a series of questions and viewed their risk assessments for the activities, and took copies of their instructors training certificates. Our risk assessment covered things like: - how people would get to and from the centre (we hired a coach so people wouldn't be travelling separately in their own transport); - arrangements in the case of accident or illness (first aid arrangements, nearest doctors for illness, and hospital for injury); - fire safety arrangements; - welfare arrangements (bedrooms, food, etc); - activities (because I visited the centre I discussed the activities with the staff there - they not only gave me a copy of their risk assessment but told me how the activity would be conducted safely). I'm sure there would be other things to consider which I've missed here. The key for me was visiting the centre and talking through the arrangements with staff. Speaking to staff gives you an understanding of the importance they place on safety. For what it's worth, we used the Outward Bound Trust.