Be very interesting to see what operators say they do to their insurers; and to see how the writing varies from site to site - given that those words will be the driving factor behind how everything is physically operated (from a legalese perspective).
It would be, I’ve had sight of parts of a couple of paintball site risk assessments & method statements*, sites don’t particularly want to share theirs with just anyone.
* People often misdefine these. What many people think is a risk assessment is actually a method statement. I wrote up a set for trading at a festival over a couple of hours once to meet a booking deadline. The event organiser was demanding a copy of the risk assessment (during the COVID era), so I received a desperate phone call to write one. I wrote a risk assessment, and forwarded it. I was called back as the organiser said X & Y were missing, which were elements of a method statement. I wrote up a method statement to accompany every element in the risk assessment and sent those on. I was called back again because X & Y had to be in the risk assessment not the method statement. I replaced the title “method statement” with “Risk assessment” … and it was all accepted
After having managed the emergency copy we then went through it all and now have a full proper set of risk assessment, mitigations and method statements for outdoor & indoor event trading
With such a niche hobby with a lot of 'scary gun' terminology
Scary gun terms are irrelevant. Guns are legal in the UK and there are many activities including real firearms.
it's got to be quite tricky to get right, unless there are insurers that specialise in firing ranges/paintball and the like maybe?
There are specialist insurers. (I couldn’t say how many of the insurers are specialist with knowledge of the industry vs how many are underwriting policies titled as such)
But there are industry bodies, the UKPSF for example offer advice and support to prospective sites - at a cost and on the assumption of the site signing up to a site membership.
(Bear in mind that the opening up of paintball sites during Covid when the government announced that sporting venues could reopen was under the clause of sign off by Sport England & the local authority who did so for paintball under the guise of UKPSF site members who had to comply with the criteria that UKPSF/SE agreed on - that is why a few Airsoft sites announced reopening followed by cancelling their reopening when they realised that there was no UK Airsoft body endorsed by Sport England
Even then how many staff are they going to have that truly understand any of this stuff (honestly no clue myself)?
That comes down to staff training, and having head Marshalls above schoolboy Marshalls … and of course by running a site professionally instead of calling random local players “player marshals”
The first official paintball site opened in the UK in 1985, over 40 years ago and according to Google FAO is the oldest Airsoft site from 1996
The UKPSF began in 1991, and the man behind it was also responsible for the European equivalent before he handed that over
I get the feeling that the writing would either be absolutely encyclopaedic in stature to cover all the possibilities.. or just comedically short.
There is no need to cover every single possibility, and to attempt to do so from scratch will result in failure. It should never be a final document, but produced and revised as time goes on
It can also never be a one size fits all solution - there will be commonality between sites and between activities, but there will always be something different for the circumstances
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