[John Collins]

I must admit to being bored.

I canot believe that everything in the ACU garden is rosy - never has been- never will be - but there are so many items for discussion and debate - and yet np posts?

I never came into this for an easy time - so lets get some issues going - even if I live to regret it

[Kinell]

Take a day off John, it's Christmas...

[scorpa3]

John Collins, on Dec 25 2006, 02:38 PM, said:

I must admit to being bored.

I canot believe that everything in the ACU garden is rosy - never has been- never will be - but there are so many items for discussion and debate - and yet np posts?

I never came into this for an easy time - so lets get some issues going - even if I live to regret it

Thanks for the invitation John, I was waiting for a rainy day to mention this one again.

Has the ACU made any progress on formal training for carrying out risk assessments (RA) yet?

You may remember I made my concerns known a while back (the best part of a year ago) and the response given was that the ACU were looking into the matter.

For anyone new to this, earlier in the year the ACU began issuing Clerks of the Course a RA form to fill in for each event. With no training in RA what-so-ever.

This came about with the requirement for the organisers of any event to formally identify, assess and either remove or reduce any risks found at an event, in case a claim for compensation was bought to court.

The Clerk of the course is expected to carry out this assessment and sign the form. If a claim was to go to court then the idea is that the form would be produced as evidence that the risk had been considered and delt with in an appropriate manner. Thus the theory is, the form would protect the Clerk of the Course from litigation.

All well and good apart from my worry that the Clerk of the Course as an unpaid volunteer is not trained in RA and might miss or worse incorrectly assess a risk resulting in harm to a person and therefore become liable for any claim.

Now I appreciate the the ACU's insurance for us officials is the best money can buy and that it should, in theory cover every eventuality, however signing this form might just drop somebody in it.

There are dozens, perhaps hundreds or risks that should be assessed at every event. Let me give a simple example purely for illustration purposes.

One might be the use of sticks to mark the boundary of a section.The assessor identifies the risk as a rider, official or other person falling on the stick causing injury.
He assesses that no action is required as both the risk of injury and the likelyhood are both low. None the less a person (not a rider in this case) slips and falls on the stick and takes their eye out.
The claim is taken up by some high powered solicitor and the Clerk of the Course finds himself in front of a Judge holding his RA form. The judge looks at the form and says "After consultation with professional Risk Assessors, I find that your assessment of the risk was incorrect. You should have removed the risk by not using sticks to mark the boundary. You are negligent. Full costs awarded."
This is an awful postion to be in, the Clerk of the Course has been found negligent. His own RA form damns him in his own writing and all he can do is look to his insurers to pay the damages. Despite him being found negligent. (Fingers crossed.)
Remember, once the Clerk of the Course signs the form, it is his responsibility. I'm confident that the insurance would pay up, but wouldn't it be far better for the assessors to be correctly trained in RA before being asked to carry out such an important task?

Off to eat the next round of Christmas pudding now. Happy Christmas everyone.

Pete Barnett
Stratford-Upon-Avon MC&LCC

[Nigel Dabster]

scorpa3, on Dec 25 2006, 06:07 PM, said:

John Collins, on Dec 25 2006, 02:38 PM, said:

I must admit to being bored.

I canot believe that everything in the ACU garden is rosy - never has been- never will be - but there are so many items for discussion and debate - and yet np posts?

I never came into this for an easy time - so lets get some issues going - even if I live to regret it

Thanks for the invitation John, I was waiting for a rainy day to mention this one again.

Has the ACU made any progress on formal training for carrying out risk assessments (RA) yet?

You may remember I made my concerns known a while back (the best part of a year ago) and the response given was that the ACU were looking into the matter.

For anyone new to this, earlier in the year the ACU began issuing Clerks of the Course a RA form to fill in for each event. With no training in RA what-so-ever.

This came about with the requirement for the organisers of any event to formally identify, assess and either remove or reduce any risks found at an event, in case a claim for compensation was bought to court.

The Clerk of the course is expected to carry out this assessment and sign the form. If a claim was to go to court then the idea is that the form would be produced as evidence that the risk had been considered and delt with in an appropriate manner. Thus the theory is, the form would protect the Clerk of the Course from litigation.

All well and good apart from my worry that the Clerk of the Course as an unpaid volunteer is not trained in RA and might miss or worse incorrectly assess a risk resulting in harm to a person and therefore become liable for any claim.

Now I appreciate the the ACU's insurance for us officials is the best money can buy and that it should, in theory cover every eventuality, however signing this form might just drop somebody in it.

There are dozens, perhaps hundreds or risks that should be assessed at every event. Let me give a simple example purely for illustration purposes.

One might be the use of sticks to mark the boundary of a section.The assessor identifies the risk as a rider, official or other person falling on the stick causing injury.
He assesses that no action is required as both the risk of injury and the likelyhood are both low. None the less a person (not a rider in this case) slips and falls on the stick and takes their eye out.
The claim is taken up by some high powered solicitor and the Clerk of the Course finds himself in front of a Judge holding his RA form. The judge looks at the form and says "After consultation with professional Risk Assessors, I find that your assessment of the risk was incorrect. You should have removed the risk by not using sticks to mark the boundary. You are negligent. Full costs awarded."
This is an awful postion to be in, the Clerk of the Course has been found negligent. His own RA form damns him in his own writing and all he can do is look to his insurers to pay the damages. Despite him being found negligent. (Fingers crossed.)
Remember, once the Clerk of the Course signs the form, it is his responsibility. I'm confident that the insurance would pay up, but wouldn't it be far better for the assessors to be correctly trained in RA before being asked to carry out such an important task?

Off to eat the next round of Christmas pudding now. Happy Christmas everyone.

Pete Barnett
Stratford-Upon-Avon MC&LCC

Using your example pete how would formal training have avoided the claim?

[scorpa3]

Formal training on Risk Assessment (RA) gives the assessor the necessary skills to judge the level of risk by comparing- the likelyhood of an incident taking place, against severity of injury and then how to take the appropriate steps based on the results.
Mistakes will still be made, this is why we will always need insurance, but we should all be working to a common approved standard. It is a lot better for the insurers/legal representatives to defend an official if that official has met the standard of assessment.
For trials riding there are a large number of generic assessments which could be written and sent out to Clerks of the Courses to consider, sign and implement.

The stick one, is only a simple illustration which I chose to use. Consider a real 'snotter' of a RA which should be written and signed for every trial: Fuelling machines at an event.
Who in their right mind would even think of writing this RA without the correct training? But it should be done for every single trial.Just think it through for a minute...... Fuelling machines at an event, what are the risks and how do we remove those risks?.


In my opinion, the RA for fueling machines at your average club trial would find that, although the likelyhood of a petrol fire would be low to medium, the outcome of a fire may result in serious injury or death. Therefore with no firefighting or first aid facilities on site, the only correct conclusion must be to remove the risk- 'strictly no refuelling allowed!'

Has anyone carried out or signed a RA for refuelling at a trial? I have and following the RA the action taken was.... 'refuelling is strictly prohibited other than in official petrol stations.' But this was for a road trial. I decided to leave this one out for our club trials. What else could I do? Ban riders from filing up their bikes?

And the list goes on and on........ we really do need guidance from the top. John has said that the form we fill in at the moment is better than nothing and he is right. But 12 months on, shouldn't we be getting a bit more help?

I guess that every road racing circuit has a health and safety policy document. It will also have a full set of Risk Assessments and for every RA there will be a Safe sytem of work on hand for every official to read and follow.
RA's only need updating periodically or when a risk changes, would it not be simple for the ACU to produce a standard set of RA's for use in trials? Then we, the clubs hold a set and simply sign to say we have complied with them.
It is my opinion that sooner or later, a Clerk of the Course will be infront of a judge following some accident and a good RA will make all the difference. Lets just hope 'WE' have done our job right when that happens.
Remember, the Clerk of the Course signs the form and it is his responsibility!

[AtomAnt]

Hey Pete, Don't you take time out for xmas like everyone else then ?

I know where your coming from on this Pete but at club level, no one really wants the hassle of doing this I think. All they want is the trial to be covered by insurance and then away we go.
You are one of the rare local club organisers who have experience in H&S and can implement it, but for the most part, organisers just haven't got the time to do a full RA, even a generic one handed out to them, and then more importantly implement it.
As you know, once you have a formal system in place then in the event of an accident, the analysis will be on the implementation, training, and actions taken by the organisers. If they haven't allowed for something in their assessment or haven't followed their procedures correctly, then even worse, been found to be negligent, then they can be legally challenged in court as an organiser.
They can of course be challenged now but you don’t see that at the moment as when accidents happen, people just take it as 'par for the course' but that will change in future as more people become aware.
For example, a classic accident at trials is when collisions happen whilst there is two way traffic. I attended a trial last year where the organiser took this very seriously and put stakes in and tape between the two way traffic and this covered approximately 1/2 mile in total over the whole trial. Now that must have taken ages to do and put away after.
Another one is a collision with a spectator on a designated route. Having designated walkways separated from the contestants etc.. . The list is endless..
This is one of the reasons I packed up organising.. I just don’t want the hassle of all this work on top of the normal duties of running a club and if this goes this way then more people will do the same I am sure. Now this is surely what we don't want to happen.
Any more burden on the organisers will kill the sport I am sure.

Having many years experience in H&S I would have said, yes lets get all these things in place but I think in the case of Trials , it needs a completely different approach. I do have some views on this but I am keen to see what other people's views are before I put them forward

[scorpa3]

I fully agree with what you're saying. The biggest problem to overcome for the ACU is the likelyhood that officials and clubs will decide it is too much hassle and give up organising events, or even switch to another governing body.
However, I feel that this has left us in the postion that we are in now. Meaning the onus for the whole risk assessment process has been put onto the Clerk of the Course in the hope that 'the less we do, the less we can do wrong!'
Yes, the ACU and their (our) insurers will stand by the official if all goes wrong. Won't they? Who carried out the assessment and who signed to say it is correct?

IF, we have to do this, (and I belive it should be done) then we should be doing it right and to the same standard accross the sport.

[scorpa3]

Perhaps this one was a bit too heavy for Christmas. Sorry, I should have saved it a bit longer.

[Paioli]

RISK ASSESMENT , HEALTH & SAFTY words that strike fear , and send any god fearing person to drink,
time consuming and a absolute pain in the neck !

been there, done it, absolute nightmare if anything goes wrong , generally ends up costing someone an
awful lot of money and sleepless nights , and lots of people suddenly develop teflon shoulders and legal
representatives (for a better name) smell a fortune.

doom and gloom maybe ! but hide your heads in the sand, run to the hills or just don't bother and it's
just likely to pop up and kick you squarley in the nuts one day!

are there any guide lines ? does anyone know ? does anyone care ? is common sense enough ?

most importantly what happens if something does go wrong ? no guess's please so if you don't
know don't take the p155 !!!

[scorpa3]

Yes, they do need to be done. They do need to be right. And as you say, it does give everyone but the Clerk of the Course (who signs the form) a get out if things go wrong.

Yet... we still have had no formal training on Risk Assessment.

I'm concerned...... infact I'm more than concerned!

I've contacted the ACU requesting guidance and it is in hand. Perhaps if every club asked for help it might be more forthcoming.

In the mean time, thank goodness we have the best Insurers who will back us up if we make the wrong assessment of a risk which causes injury.

[Paioli]

did you get any advice from the acu ?

had a chat with Mike Rapley and Nick Shield at a classic round they seem to have done alot of h&s and
r/a could be worth giving them a ring, they run the lancs county mc events .

i also think we could draw up h&s and r/a on line ,and even in this forum ,identify problem areas pool
ideas and make workable solutions , like the refueling problem ie what starts a fuel fire , naked flame,
sparks , fuel over spilling onto hot engine , so we need a refueling area away from the main car park,
proper fire extinguisher , no smoking , engine switched off, proper fuel cans and spouts and no machines
started in refueling area or rule that every rider has a extinguisher and firstaid kit and ban smoking while
refueling , seem to rember back in the late 70's and the old bulto plastic tanks causing a bit of a stink and
nearly banned on fire safty grounds, 30 years on were thinking about fire safty again !!!

[scorpa3]

I drew up a simple to use RA form which I sent to the ACU but am awaiting approval before using it.

The official reply from the Chairman of the ACU, Mr Parker, was that my concerns were noted and the subject was being looked into. ALmost a year on and we seem to be in exactly the same position.

Your suggestions for re-fueling are good but RA on this subject should be done by the professionals and sent to us as the unpaid volunteers, not in my opinion the other way around.

[Paioli]

i hope you have kept records of all correspondence you have had with the acu because they might
get caught with there pants down on this one , first rule make sure you cover your own ar5e, because
concerns noted over a year ago sounds to me like noted and forgotten, carry on doing what you think
is right there is no substitute for good common sense

[rabie]

its a big minefield of an area

simply put the fact we are doing something is alomst certainly a great step in the right direction (its better than doign nothing!)

however i've seen the fun the norwich vikings have been in with their local H&S - well not too bad, but they think that volunter clubs are covered by H&S

[John Collins]

Apologies guy's for setting a ball rolling and then not making comments. I forgot I was off to Sheffield - and today probably like everyone else it is back to work time and trying to clear backlog of emails etc.

Promise to try to make a few points about Risk Assesment in next day or two at most