Rosyth District Scout Council

Risk Assessment

Document Index

Following two recent issues of safeguarding where one young person suffered injury, and a coroners report into the death of an Explorer Scout on a non-permit routine activity, It is clear that effective and adequate Risk Assessments are not being done.

Risk assessments fall into two specific ares:

Risk assessments on premises including buildings and outside areas such as campsites. These are the responsibility of the trustees of the property and must be looked at with the safety of scouting persons and the public including those who may hire the property for events both within and outside scouting.

The second risk assessments are activity based, and should be completed by the leader in charge of the activity. Although there may be generic risk assessment made to cover particular activities, allowance must be made to dynamically change these assessments in the case of changed conditions.

As we now live in a world of litigation, lawyers love it when there is no evidence of risk assessment being carried out. To avoid this, it is essential that a written document should exist to at least demonstrate that an effort has been made to recognise, assess and nullify any perceived risk. The Scout Association have produced several documents to aid in the process of risk assessments and some of these are tabled below. However, it is essential to read the whole section as it contains valuable information.

Sample Documents

The following documents are available to download to give an idea of what can be done. It is up to your own management committee to agree what is necessary for your own situation. They need to be altered to suit your own premises and activities. If you hire premises, they should have risk assessments available to refer to. If not you will need to complete assessments for your own group. Remember that like all documents, they must be dated, and undergo re-evaluation and revision on a regular basis.