Any activity that takes place out of your usual singular place of meeting, or, any activities which happen at your usual place of meeting which are listed below, require approval from the District Commissioner before undertaking. Please allow up to 7 days for us to process your request
List of Adventurous Activities:
- archery
- caving
- climbing and abseiling, except:
- bouldering
- climbs using auto belay systems (systems that lower a climber to the ground without any human intervention)
- cycling in cycle environment one and two
- hillwalking in terrain one and two
- hovercrafting
- snowsports (except artificial slopes and nursery slopes)
- all water activities, except swimming, on class B1, B2, B3 or A waters
- all motorised water activities and SCUBA activities on class C waters.
If your activity involves more than two groups, you need special approval from the District Trustee Board.
This is to make sure appropriate arrangements are in place, and that the governance for the event is duly considered. We may suggest running it as a district event, which will allow you to benefit from our booking systems and financial support.
Some providers (such as trampoline parks and clip and climbs) ask for a disclaimer or waiver to be signed for each person taking part in the activity. This is something which parents/carers must sign on behalf of their young person; not the leader. Parents/carers should be given sufficient information along with the disclaimer/waiver to make an informed decision to sign it or not. Leaders can only sign disclaimers/waivers for their own personal participation.
The activity organiser must notify Unity (Scout Insurance Services) before any disclaimers or waivers are signed you can do this by emailing a copy of the waiver to scouts@unityins.co.uk
We are working on building a library of pre-approved activities, where you will be able to readily download the Risk Assessments and Appropriate Public Liability certificates from the provider, and where necessary, their waiver is pre-approved.
We will update this area once content is ready. This is not expected to be ready until September 2024
Some activities are frequently rejected, as they either do not have appropriate public liability insurance (in line with our expectations) , or their Waiver is not accepted by our insurers.
A list of activities and suppliers who are rejected for activities are listed below:
These activities are not permitted within The Scout Association, so will always be rejected:
- towing of inflatables behind powered watercraft, such as banana boating
- bungee jumping
- hitch hiking
- knife throwing
- archery tag and other combat style archery activities
