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23 September 2025

Safety management made simple

Practical solutions at an off-grid club in the Pennines

Club Overview

Teesdale Sailing & Watersports Club is based at Grassholme Reservoir in County Durham, with 49-hectares of water for sailing, canoeing and paddle-boarding. The volunteer-run community club is an RYA Recognised Training Centre offering dinghy and powerboat courses.

Identifying the problem

Teesdale SWC wanted to make its health and safety management more accessible, consistent and effective. Most long-standing members were safety conscious as individuals, there was a good number of qualified safety boat helms, and the club had a water safety policy and risk assessments in place.

However, incidents/near misses were rarely analysed by the committee and many newer members were unaware of the club’s safety policies and procedures. Additionally, the club’s existing incident book procedure had been flagged by an inspector as a data protection issue.

Implementing a solution

With its rural location in the North Pennines, this small off-grid community club, which only recently gained solar panels for power and has limited internet access, had to develop a mix of digital and off-line solutions:

  • The first move was to introduce a new reporting system. QR codes and online forms weren’t an option, so the club’s accident reporting book was replaced with a secure post-box fixed to the clubroom wall, with incident forms available in adjacent plastic weatherproof pockets. The Commodore and RYA Principal were given keys, and the post-box is checked regularly, with any submitted forms then taken home, scanned and kept in a secure password-protected part of the club website accessible only to the committee.
  • Next, health and safety was added as a standing item that is always first on the agenda at monthly committee meetings. The item is run a bit like AOB (Any Other Business) – any committee member can raise any safety point they wish. This created a forum in which the incident forms could be reviewed, which enabled the club to identify and address any issues, with discussions then shared with the membership.
  • To make safety documents easier to find, a new ‘Safety’ tab was introduced on the website. Club members no longer need to scroll through documents like the club constitution or boat hire agreements when looking for safety information. This makes it easier for people to find relevant information, policies and procedures, including incident/near miss/accident reporting, and guidance for officer of the day, safety boat and personal safety. However, being online, this information wasn’t accessible to volunteers running sailing on the day, so physical quick reference guides for the duty officers were produced and stored in the Race Office.
  • Hand in hand with these developments has been the introduction of a members’ WhatsApp group, which makes it easy to post a safety announcement with a link to the relevant article on the website, and generates more engagement than club emails.

Assessing the impact

The club has found that replacing its open-access incident reporting book with the post-box is better for meeting the legal requirements of GDPR (data protection) and enables incidents to be submitted confidentially. Unlike the book, the post-box cannot be lost or moved around the clubhouse, making it more accessible and much easier to submit an incident report.

All of these factors encourage members to share incident reports in a timely manner. Having health and safety front and centre at committee meetings then enables action to be taken and any learning points shared with the members. The new health and safety procedures in action have led to significant operational improvements, including for example:

  • a longer line added to safety boats for retrieving dinghies stuck on the dam wall
  • a ‘big ticket’ item with a successful £10,000 grant application for a new safety boat
  • tie-ins to ensure oars remain attached to the rowing boats which are used to reach club powerboats when moored on the lake
  • the addition of harness cutters next to powerboat consoles for quick access, in addition to the safety knife that is always on board in a yellow dry bag
  • masthead floats on all club dinghies in recognition that those who used them tend to be learning or less experienced sailors
  • educating club members (particularly new sailors) about how to wear buoyancy aids correctly.

Insights and tips

Commodore James Hewitt says: “We didn’t set out with a grand plan to improve our safety management system. We took small steps that created a positive cycle, where one improvement led to another, and then another. Using the post-box is a process that can be done easily and quickly, so people are more willing to do it after a long day on the water because it takes no time to find a form, fill it out while having a cup of tea, and drop it in before going home. It helps that the kettle and the post-box are in the same room!

“Previously it was a case of ‘where’s the book’ when people wanted to report an incident, or if the committee wanted to look at it. And sometimes if the accident book couldn’t be found, then someone would introduce a new one, so you’d be looking for a different/latest version of it, making it difficult work out baseline data and spot any trends.

“I feel that more incidents are now being reported, and alongside creating a safety tab on the website and making health and safety top of the agenda at committee meetings, it is more organised and responsive. Anything and everything is now reported. We can identify little issues before they become bigger issues, take action, and share the information with members.”

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