Insurance

OutdoorLads insurance does not provide cover for individual members in the way that their medical, travel, or other insurance would. Some members / leaders may choose to buy this for their own benefit.

OutdoorLads is not regulated by the FSA and does not make recommendations on insurance products. 

For your information, OutdoorLads full members are able to obtain discounts on insurance offered by some other organisations we are affiliated to. Cycling UK offer our members affiliate membership and the BMC provide discounted insurance to our members. See here:

Cycling UK Individual affiliate membership using our membership number 

BMC Travel Insurance using a voucher code 

The membership number / voucher code is available to full members only and can be found on this page here. 

OutdoorLads has three main types of insurance - Public Liability, Employers Liability and Professional Indemnity. Public Liability is the one that is described here, as it is the one which affects members and leaders. 

In the very unlikely event that something goes badly wrong on one of our events and someone is injured or someone’s property damaged, they may make a claim against OutdoorLads. Our Public Liability Insurance aims to cover us against such a claim.

All the above will be managed by the website and/or the office, so Leaders don’t need to do anything additional. 

OutdoorLads is covered for our volunteer leaders to deliver the following type of events:

• Hill walking/ Mountain walking
• Camping
• Hostelling
• Climbing/abseiling/ bouldering - indoor and outdoor
• Road cycling
• Mountain biking
• Skiing - dry slope
• Skiing
• Orienteering
• Night walking

We are also covered to run a range of other activities when delivered by Third Parties, although conditions apply here. Other activities can easily be added to the policy should we need to.

It is worth clarifying that OutdoorLads insurance does not provide cover for individual members in the way that their medical, travel, or other insurance would. Some members may choose to buy this for their own benefit. Cycling UK and the BMC provide this kind of insurance. See the section above on personal insurance. 

The combined Public Liability, Employers Liability and Professional Indemnity that we need to operate costs the charity nearly £5,000 a year and is just one of the many fixed costs we have to pay. When people occasionally ask why we charge a membership fee and make a small profit on overnight events - that’s why.

We've prepared a FAQ on the insurance, which you might find useful.

What do I do if I get an email with details of a member’s medical condition? (for leaders:)

First of all, you are not expected to be an expert but some simple preparation could be useful. The most likely conditions people could report are diabetes, asthma epilepsy and allergies. So when you meet the group a simple check with the member would be wise - checking if they have their medication and asking if there is anything you should know, or how you can help them should a problem arise. They will usually be very aware of what help they need. Should emergency services be involved you would be able to tell the responders what issues you have been told about. This is no more than you should be doing on current event briefings.

How are events with multiple leaders covered?

OutdoorLads is covered for its staff and volunteers generally - it doesn’t matter who the ‘lead leader’ is. In the following examples ‘OutdoorLads’ means our staff and volunteers.

What if someone is hit by a rock dislodged by someone?

A claim against OutdoorLads would only be successful if OutdoorLads was proven to be negligent. A simple accident with no negligence would not result in a successful claim.

What if someone drops someone on a belay?

A claim against OutdoorLads would only be successful if OutdoorLads was proven to be negligent. If the leader was confident that the person belaying knew how to do it correctly but they simply failed to do so safely, a claim is unlikely to successful.

What about non-members who turn up to an event?

If a non-member is allowed on an OutdoorLads event then we are not insured if they have, or cause an accident. What’s worse is that a claim arising is much more likely to be successful as we would have been negligent in allowing that person to take part. We would not hold their details; they would not have signed a participation statement and they would not have been told to tell us about any medical issues. As we wouldn’t be insured we would have to pay a successful claim ourselves.

What about other things that might happen on an event - like wild swimming, bonfires etc?

A claim against OutdoorLads would only be successful if OutdoorLads was proven to be negligent. For example, if people want to go swimming that’s one thing - if the leader told people to jump off a bridge into a river of un-known depth that’s another thing.

What if a member’s dog bites someone?

It would be extremely unlikely that anyone would successfully prove that would have been down to OutdoorLads negligence.

What if a member trips and sustains an injury?

A claim against OutdoorLads would only be successful if OutdoorLads was proven to be negligent. On any normal event an accident would be just that. If however, a leader took people beyond the level they are authorised to, made reckless route decisions and failed to have adequate equipment that might be called negligent.

Tell me more about these participation statements and how that works?

You will start to see event pages and messages go out with requests for members to complete participation statements. This is a link to a simple form which all members and leaders will need to complete before they attend their next event. It’s normal practice in the activities industry and is a standard requirement of our insurance provider.

Members will need to complete the participation statement only once, unless attending a cycling event, in which case there is a separate cycling statement to complete.

Just to note, the way we are collating these is a medium term fix; this will ultimately be incorporated into the website and will be more seamless than it is currently!

The two participation statements can be found here:

Cycling: https://www.cognitoforms.com/OutdoorLads/MemberParticipationStatementCycling

All other event types: https://www.cognitoforms.com/OutdoorLads/MemberParticipationStatement

Leaders will receive an automated message on the morning of the event if there are any attendees who have NOT completed the participation statement. You should ask them to do so when they arrive and before the event starts. In the unlikely event that they refuse, let them know that they are not part of the event.

There is standard text on the leader resources section of the website which you should cut and paste onto any event pages you create about participation statements, please.

If you have a question not answered here, please contact the office on support@outdoorlads.com

For leaders, more information on insurance is available on the leader resources section.