Adventurous Activities Licensing Service

[Pete K]

There never seemed to be any real problems until the government interfered.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyme_Bay_canoeing_tragedy

 

[graham]

It's not about competence, it's about arse-covering.

 

[Pitlamp]

There never seemed to be any real problems until the government interfered.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyme_Bay_canoeing_tragedy

That was indeed a tragedy - but unrelated to caving.

 

[graham]

There never seemed to be any real problems until the government interfered.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyme_Bay_canoeing_tragedy

That was indeed a tragedy - but unrelated to caving.

Wrong, Pitlamp. It was about managing and supervising children taking part in an 'outdoor pursuit.' Caving is by no means a special case to be treated differently to canoeing, sea-canoeing, diving, rock climbing, canyoning, etc etc. 

 

[Pitlamp]

Wrong Graham.

All those examples you mention have different hazards associated with them and any regulation should be administered by people who fully understand those hazards (in our case, fellow cavers). Yes, there may be some common ground, in the sense of management of youngsters - but the caving world has plenty of people who are experienced and competent in working with children.

Caving should be managed by cavers, not inexpert beaurocrats who suddenly appeared from nowhere as a response by a government which wanted to be seen to "do something".

 

[graham]

So, Pitlamp, cavers can learn nothing from others about how to carry out risk assessments?

A good setup is the one that we had, here, with the student union's permanent safety officer, before his job was outsourced. He never tried to impose specific requirements for caving or caver training on us, but he made damn sure that we understood our responsibilities with regard to, especially, training novices and introducing them to caving and made sure we understood formal risk assessment.

Mind, he said he had far greater problems with organised pub crawls than he ever did with outdoor pursuits clubs.

 

[Gollum]

They are looking at the systems in place. i.e. are you using the correct qualified staff with the correct level of experience with qualifications etc up to date with a means of checking. Is there a system in place to ensure equipment used is fit for purpose and maintained well and a system to remove faulty or out of date equipment from thee system.
They don't need to be cavers to know about systems to manage safety/ You don't have to be able to swim the channel to coach someone how to do it

 

[Stu]

Pitlamp may have the wrong impression of what AALS actually do. Gollum explains it well.

Furthermore the inspectors aren't "inexpert beaurocrats (sic)"; they're usually senior qualified outdoor practitioners e.g. Level 5 paddle coaches, M.I.Cs. My direct dealings with the inspectors has always been pleasant and valuable. If truth be told they often wanted the paperwork side of it condensed so it could be read by staff without sending them to sleep.

This said, I'm definitely no fan-boy. My major irritation with the system has always been that it was, to my mind, supposed to introduce the idea to the customer of your service, that all the checks and balances were in place: a sort of one stop shop, a seal of approval as it were. If you have the AALA/AALS stamp you were Kosher. Yet invariably customers still seemed to want copies of everything and anything i.e. they were implicitly doing the checking themselves!

 

[cap n chris]

It is perhaps worth noting that David Cameron wrote "Lord Young has come forward with a wide range
of far reaching proposals which this Government fully supports", the relevant one to this thread being to "abolish the Adventure Activities Licensing Authority and replace licensing with a code of practice".

Hasn't happened yet because, so it would seem, David Cameron's Government doesn't fully support Lord Young's proposals after all.

http://www.number10.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/402906_CommonSense_acc.pdf

 

[r_walklate@hotmail.com]

AALS are not just an 'assessor' of outdoor centres professionals etc they are also very good for information, you can physically speak to someone who will give an answer on current best practice.

 

[Rhys]

If you ask me, the abolition suggestion derives from the usual pre-election guff from the tories who wanted a "bonfire of the quangos". They automatically assume that such bodies are a pointless waste of money. But, when it actually comes to looking at what many of the quangos do, they realise that many of them are doing a useful job which people want to be done. They could shut the quango down and transfer the work to someone else; HSE for example. But the HSE have already been cut to the bone and have no spare cash or resources to take on the work - they'd probably just end up having to re-employ the people they sacked from the quango. So, after a half-cocked announcement that it's closing, people get left in a limbo not knowing what's going to happen while the muppet politicians try to engineer themselves a face-saving exit strategy.

Rhys

 

[graham]

If you ask me, the abolition suggestion derives from the usual pre-election guff from the tories who wanted a "bonfire of the quangos". They automatically assume that such bodies are a pointless waste of money. But, when it actually comes to looking at what many of the quangos do, they realise that many of them are doing a useful job which people want to be done. They could shut the quango down and transfer the work to someone else; HSE for example. But the HSE have already been cut to the bone and have no spare cash or resources to take on the work - they'd probably just end up having to re-employ the people they sacked from the quango. So, after a half-cocked announcement that it's closing, people get left in a limbo not knowing what's going to happen while the muppet politicians try to engineer themselves a face-saving exit strategy.

Rhys

Good analysis methinks.

 

[Ship-badger]

There are a couple of points I would like to add in to the discussion.
Firstly, all the AALS inspectors that I have dealt with have been experts in at least one of the disciplines that they are inspecting. A friend of mine, who has caved and climbed all over the world is an AALS inspector. So Pitlamp's point is a tad incorrect.
Secondly, the vast majority of outdoor pursuits providers were dead set against the AALS when it was first forced upon us. Many of those same providers are now very loathe to see it disappear. It is, indeed, a funny old world.

 

[cap n chris]

Secondly, the vast majority of outdoor pursuits providers were dead set against the AALS when it was first forced upon us. Many of those same providers are now very loathe to see it disappear. It is, indeed, a funny old world.

It figures, though. Make a fuss about additional bureaucracy, inspections and costs but once it's become enshrined in law and you've signed up and become part of the cartel these hurdles and hoops are useful deterrents which keep newcomers from starting up in competition against you - it's a big boys' charter to remain in the big boys' gang.

The government also benefits from a higher tax-take, too, since the big boys' corporation taxes augment the Exchequer's wallet while a swarm of unlicensed sole traders wouldn't be so lucrative. The stealth tax of the licence fee also employs a good number of people at no cost to the Government other than passing the legislation to create their role in the first place. So who pays for all this? - the customer does.

A sad down-side of it though is that there are plenty of excellent cavers who are dissuaded/prohibited from offering great caving to youngsters at a price they can afford.

The net result of industrialised outdoor pursuits is large group sizes having a slow procession through a straightforward cave tackling a handful of non-technical obstacles in the couple of hours their schedule allows. Yes, it's caving,... but it doesn't really set the enthusiasm ablaze and often results in "If that's caving then it's fair enough and relatively enjoyable but I think I'll give it a miss in future".

On the other hand, if the budget is effectively increased by the removal of the bureaucratic imposts, then small groups (3-5) can go for a similar price, engaging the services of a genuinely passionate competent caver who has a bit of free time at the weekend, and do three times as much caving in the time available - and enjoy a far more representative experience of the sort of trips cavers do for fun!... the net result is a massively increased proportion of converts to boost the UK's dwindling caver population.

So there you go! - the law of unintended consequences rules... Make caving conform to a procedural bureaucratic framework and run the risk of turning it into the equivalent of a processed piece of beige monotonous rubber cheese.

Thankfully though there's plenty of very passionate and charismatic cave leaders out there who do an excellent job and make trips an enjoyable and memorable experience despite the cattle processing environment they inhabit.

 

[r_walklate@hotmail.com]

The net result of industrialised outdoor pursuits is large group sizes having a slow procession through a straightforward cave doing a handful of obstacles in the couple of hours their schedule allows. Yes, it's caving,... but it doesn't really set the enthusiasm ablaze and often results in "If that's caving then it's fair enough, relatively enjoyable but I think I'll give it a miss in future".


I think it's a bit unfair that they come away saying 'fair enough I'll give it a miss' working on the industrial side of outdoors I tend to find that it's more 'that's the best thing I've done' or ' I'm never doing it again!!! I have to adopt the attitude that this is there one and only chance to do this so give them 100 percent, I do however concede that time limitations have an impact.

We can give the customer plenty of direction for an extra trip with other organisation/setups but I believe the biggest hurdle from then is getting somebody to do something with the information, in my situation a parent. Actually them being prepared to take the child to a club, freelance caver etc.
Again though I concede that an AALS licence stops alot of both qualified and unqualified but experienced cavers continuing someone's enthusiasm to cave, myself included.

 

[ian.p]

The "expenses" idea does not work - any exchange of monies whatsoever brings the activity provision within licensing and the law.

I think you are wrong hear Hammy i voulenteer with a couple of non AALA registered childrens organisations one of which takes over 3000 children a year camping,canoing, cycling and caving we pay staff expenses and i dont beleive this has ever caused a problem.

 

[cap n chris]

The net result of industrialised outdoor pursuits is large group sizes having a slow procession through a straightforward cave doing a handful of obstacles in the couple of hours their schedule allows. Yes, it's caving,... but it doesn't really set the enthusiasm ablaze and often results in "If that's caving then it's fair enough, relatively enjoyable but I think I'll give it a miss in future".


I think it's a bit unfair that they come away saying 'fair enough I'll give it a miss' working on the industrial side of outdoors I tend to find that it's more 'that's the best thing I've done' or ' I'm never doing it again!!! I have to adopt the attitude that this is there one and only chance to do this so give them 100 percent, I do however concede that time limitations have an impact.

You are correct and right to highlight my skewed version... however I think the point being made remains valid - the extrapolation being that presuming you had the financial/organisational benefit of being able to professionally lead youth trips with a leader/child/teacher ratio of (say) 1:4:1 then the resulting trip would be more representative of sports caving, imo, and hence get a much greater percentage of potentially life-long converts to caving.

 

[r_walklate@hotmail.com]

I totally agree with you Chris that smaller, more intensive trips would keep the fire burning of a enthusiastic caver and one of the hardest things I find in my job is not being able to release the potential of individuals.

 

[Pitlamp]

So, Pitlamp, cavers can learn nothing from others about how to carry out risk assessments?

A good setup is the one that we had, here, with the student union's permanent safety officer, before his job was outsourced. He never tried to impose specific requirements for caving or caver training on us, but he made damn sure that we understood our responsibilities with regard to, especially, training novices and introducing them to caving and made sure we understood formal risk assessment.

Mind, he said he had far greater problems with organised pub crawls than he ever did with outdoor pursuits clubs.

  Nice one Graham!

If you do a proper risk analysis - aren't pub crawls rather more hazardous than a caving trip?

Before I changed career a few years ago I spent many years in education, dealing with young people - and had a special involvement in risk assessment and health & safety generally. One of the most valuable things I learned was that if you have a complex paperwork system, which "satisfies" those who reckon they have reason to inspect it, that tends to end up in a filing cabinet gathering dust and tends to lose its value.

Far more valuable is a proper risk assessment for a specific activity with specific people involved (and in the caving contect, specific conditions on the day). That's what forces you really to think about that trip in detail - which probably makes it safer. But that's exactly what any experienced caver would do informally anyway, making judgments about the wisdom to go ahead with a planned trip. The only real value of writing it all down (apart from usefully sharing the contents with others on the same job) is to keep the beaurocrats happy. Oh - and that nice man with the wig, if it all goes wrong.

By the way, I suspect few people would not regard HSE officers as the most expert in how to carry out risk assessments - right? Weren't they the ones who were trying to make all you instructors use double ropes on pitches a few years ago? That was a wonderful idea, wasn't it? Specially in a flood liable cave where you really want to be in and out fast. That's another example of why I'd prefer it if caving was left just to cavers to make decisions about. 

Anyway, never mind all this - the light on Whernside this afternoon was just stunning! Kind of put all this government guff in perspective . . .

 

[graham]

By the way, I suspect few people would not regard HSE officers as the most expert in how to carry out risk assessments - right? Weren't they the ones who were trying to make all you instructors use double ropes on pitches a few years ago? That was a wonderful idea, wasn't it? Specially in a flood liable cave where you really want to be in and out fast. That's another example of why I'd prefer it if caving was left just to cavers to make decisions about.

Well, actually, the first time I ever heard double ropes recommended for "S"RT it was a member of a well-known Welsh caving club, back in the late 1970s. I could probably find the reference in their journal if I tried.

Anyway, never mind all this - the light on Whernside this afternoon was just stunning! Kind of put all this government guff in perspective . . .

This lot will be taxing that soon, mark my words.