Lower Divisions (3&4) - How Could Things be Improved?

[Dee]

I may be wrong, but I think I was told (by Canadian Paddler?) that the competition cover for juniors only applies to specific club affiliation types, not all clubs.

So the current set up means we have to know that a junior entrant is registered as a club member (this involves psychic powers as not all clubs issue membership cards) and the type if affiliation that the club holds. It is just not realistic.

On top of that is all the extra paperwork for the day memberships

As far as I can see most events just give up (or don't realise that there is even a potential issue) and ignore day memberships. I won't take the risk so won't be running another div 4 until the mess is resolved (Admittedly I've only organised one div 4 short course event, but that's when I discovered the minefield).

[djberriman]

I agree with the comments re BC membership and the fact adults are treated unfairly as they have already affialiated through their club.

In addition clubs run come and try it sessions and allow guests to paddle before joining which are presumably covered by their insurance so I am unsure why a div 4 would not be covered. My vote would be for this requirement to be scrapped altogether so anyone can enter a div 4 and is covered under BC insurance as with any other public event.

[CeeBee]

Dee

I am in favour of abolishing having to pay day membership fees for club paddlers racing in Division 4 as a means os making it easier to attract new entrants into their first race. It would also let a Div 4 slaloms be run on a club night.

I think previous arguments have said that the fee is for insurance but I think this is a smokescreen. I think that personal insurance is not required at a slalom as the organising club have insurance for the event being run through the BC/SCA insurance.

What does an individual paddler competing need insurance for? and what could someone claim from them?

[Nick Taylor]

Personal comment as an Organiser
I don't really see how it is practical to check that an junior entrant for a div 4 race is both:
a) a member of a club
b) the club is the right sort of club

[jke]

To reply to Nick’s comment and Dee’s post yesterday morning. If the club is affiliated to BC as a senior club with a registered youth section the secretary is sent a wad of membership cards which can be distributed to the junior div 4 paddlers to present at registration. Or more likely team leader hangs on to them just in case they are needed. Usually writing down the affiliation number on the entry card is sufficient.

For a senior club with registered youth section the capitation fee for non-BC youth members is free. Whereas the adult capitation fee for non-BC members is not.

For our taster sessions the BC insurance covers 4 taster sessions per person before they have to join the club ie. become a club member. There does seem to be a mismatch between that and div 4 insurance cover. An extra £5 on top of the entry fee must put a lot of adults off. I say adults, most juniors will be a member of an affiliated club.

[Dee]

To reply to Nick’s comment and Dee’s post yesterday morning. If the club is affiliated to BC as a senior club with a registered youth section the secretary is sent a wad of membership cards which can be distributed to the junior div 4 paddlers to present at registration. Or more likely team leader hangs on to them just in case they are needed. Usually writing down the affiliation number on the entry card is sufficient.

For a senior club with registered youth section the capitation fee for non-BC youth members is free. Whereas the adult capitation fee for non-BC members is not.

For our taster sessions the BC insurance covers 4 taster sessions per person before they have to join the club ie. become a club member. There does seem to be a mismatch between that and div 4 insurance cover. An extra £5 on top of the entry fee must put a lot of adults off. I say adults, most juniors will be a member of an affiliated club.

In my experience of running a div 4 (only did it once primarily because of this issue), juniors do not have membership cards. Most do not even know whether their club has the right sort of membership, but most do not expect to pay day membership. Further if they write down a number how am I supposed to know that it is valid and that their membership is up to date?

My concern is that I do not want the hassle or paper work of charging for day membership, nor do I want to put paddlers off by charging them. However, if I let them paddle, knowing that they might be uninsured, and something goes wrong then I could well find myself liable as I would not have followed proper procedures.

Surely it would be possible to agree blanket insurance cover for all div 4 events at a central level

[jke]

Yes totally agree.

[JimW]

It is really worrying that no-one really understands any of this!

The biggest problem is going to be getting the insurers to extend the BC cover at a time when they are already a bit nervous about how much control BC really have over their own members etc.

I thought that junior members of any affiliated club (there are some clubs that do not affiliate to any NGB because they don't see any benefit to it at all) could enter Div4, I didn't realise they have to be part of a registered youth section of an affiliated club because I didn't even know such a thing existed!

As for the insurance requirement, my understanding is this (and I may be quite wide of the mark):
- The organiser (club committee) is covered by BC insurance, provided they meet the requirements (event safety officer and RA or management plan accepted by BC/SCA), for any liabilities they might have for injury to any 3rd parties. So, if a competitor misses a line and is subsequently hurt, and an injury lawyer tried to claim that the course was not set up safely, the organising club would be covered.
- If competitors run into each other on the course, or the example Kelso likes to use is a competitors boat causing injury to the person trying to rescue it, that is not the organisers liability (unless perhaps they were set off at unsafe intervals), the competitor requires third party insurance that will protect them against a claim that the injured party might need to make against them for causign the accident, which is why full NGB membership is required, except in division 4. The organising club's insurance, although it is the same policy brokered through the same organisation, would not protect the competitor if they are sued.

Then there is nitty gritty and apparent anomolies:
- Juniors in youth sections of affiliated clubs are automatically covered, but seniors aren't - why? Because BC has negotiated something to this effect, possibly they convinced the insurers that juniors competing in the entry division are extremely unlikely to have enough power to cause injury to anyone, but couldn't convince them that the same would be true of seniors? I don't know, I'm guessing.
- Clubs can have non-members join in club activities 3 or 4 times (SCA recommend twice but I think the hard limit is 4, most clubs go for 3) before they need to join - how? Because this has been negotiated with the insurers. The activity they are joining in is considered to be normal club activity covered by the clubs standing risk assessment (!) and planning, and BC have managed to get the insurers to cover these people for those 4 sessions, before they need to be club members to enjoy the benefits of affiliation (i.e. the club is clearly covered for injury to that person)
- Clubs are only covered for non members at come and try it events if they follow the same process that slalom clubs have to go through to run a slalom (which only covers the club).
- Affiliated clubs are insured for liabilities agaist their own members, but are those members thereby insured for liability against 3rd parties - I'm really not sure on that one?
- Ordinary members (possibly affiliated?) are covered for normal 3rd party liability when doing any kind of non-competitive paddling, but what about when they compete? I suspect that BC has to pay a higher premium if they are going to compete (possibly if they are going to coach?) which is why you have to be a full member to compete. Where do I get this idea come from? Another sport; the SPKA provides insurance cover for kite related sports and organises the Scottish Kite Buggy Race series, the insurance cover until recently was probably on the same underlying policy as BC insurance (most sports were on the same one). The insurers decided they didn't want to insure us for kite sports anymore, so SPKA had to look around and negotiate a new insurance deal, the best they could come up with was one where the organisation is still covered when running race events, and members are covered for 3rd party in normal kite related activity, but there was a specific exclusion for competitor to competitor liability cover. It is one of the reasons I stopped buggy racing and do more paddling again - we have never had competitors need to sue each other, but I've seen some accidents which could easily have been much nastier and I just couldn't rule it out. Look at your travel insurance, even when you get the hazardous activity extensions they generally exclude any competition activity, or you have to phone to get an additional quote for that sort of thing.

So is CeeBee correct that the insurance claim is a red herring, or is it actually for real?
I've outlined my thoughts but I have no idea what the actual details of BC insurance are, I am just inferring from other insurance and taking the stated requirements at face value.

Either way, it would be really useful to have things simplified, whether that is by sorting out insurance to cover anyone at div 4, or busting the myth and doing away with talk of insurance altogether.

To make things really complex, if someone negotiated their own 3rd party insurance cover with 10 million limit and had a cover note detailing that they are covered for competing in slalom, would that be accepted in lieu of NGB membership? - presumably not because the NGBs want/need members, although in a way non-UK competitors do exactly that by using their own NGB membership/insurance to race.

[JimW]

Did my post kill this thread?

I hope not, I would really like to understand what the insurance issues really are and was hoping that some definitive statements might be drawn out of the woodwork.....

People do ask div 3/4 organisers to explain the insurance situation, it would be good if there was a decent explanation they could give other than "Because the rules say...."

[Dee]

I think you put it all so perfectly that no-one had anything to add!

I'm hoping that there might be some feed back from committee via Nick Taylor when he has time, but it is only a couple of days since meeting

[djberriman]

A few thoughts as I'm filling in my returns from Howsham.

Why do protest fees go to the slalom comittee?
Why does the slalom committee get money from an open?
Why does the club bear the majority of the MCD?

MCD is a pain to administer, hardly worth reclaiming £28.80 for the amount of work it takes.

Administering promotions monetary wise at a double event and after the event is a pain. Are there any actual rules that dictate what happens when this happens. Perhaps we should just have a rule that says the original entry fee applies and waive the extra few pounds. Seems a bit off saying well done on getting promoted, that'll be £x please.

[CeeBee]

Protest fees have gone to British Canoeing for as long as I remember. The protests are usually dealt with by a member of the Section Judges appointed by British Canoeing and the amount of protests isn't high so to me it isn't a big deal.

No idea why the Slalom committee get money from an Open as it is not ranking and doesn't need any Slalom committee support. I'm pretty sure this didn't apply many years ago. I would argue that the organising club should retain all money from an Open. When we run other non ranking races such as Scottish Champs and GB Junior Champs (for non Div 1 paddlers only), admin fees don't apply.

Multi Class Discount is to encourage paddlers to enter another class at the same event. Charging another £13 for a double Div 3 on top of the first £13 seems a bit steep to me. The 2nd entry of a double is about 40% cheaper than the 1st race so I would argue that the 3rd and 4th entry for a double in another class should also be 40% cheaper. The exception to this could be events where water time is paid for. We charged £3 extra for C1 and C2s at the Alva race in the Scottish Schools and because it was set at a reasonable rate, lots of the paddlers had the fun of doing another class which must be good for the sport.

And for promotions where they race at say Div 4 on the Saturday and Div 3 on the Sunday, we take the fee as the average of the double Div 4 + double Div 3 fee i.e. (£8+£13)/2 = £10.50 so they pay an extra £2.50 if they are promoted.

[djberriman]

Protests - There are no section judges at 2/3/4

MCD - club only gets £1.20 of the £3 rebated for which you have to trawl through the results and list all the people who claimed an MCD or be very organised and do it as you accept entries.

We also did the average 'rule' for the promotions, problem is this then complicates the calculation of all the fees payable to the slalom committee on the return so I'd suggest we just charge the original rate and the paddler gets a benefit for one race.

Not critiicism and some things may have been so for a long time. Just looking at how we can make things simpler and fairer.

[CeeBee]

No criticism taken - open dialogue good and was just trying to give it some historical context.

If there was a first race fee and then a subsequent race fee so that first are + subsequent race = current double entry fee, you would solve the promotion issue as on day 1 they would pay the single for the first race on day 2, they would pay the subsequent fee for the second race.

However, this only applies at mixed slaloms i.e. Div 3/4, Div 2/3 or Div 1/2 (of which there were none in 2016) and only a few fall into the category of racing in the lower Division on the Saturday and the higher Division on the Sunday so not a big issue. Over the years this has caused us to scratch our heads as we felt 2 single fees wasn't fair so came up with the compromise of averaging the 2 double fees.

At Div 2 and below, given that the club organise the jury and the judging, I can see an argument for the club to keep protests. Again, it will only be a few pounds at most but another thing not to count to put on the summary sheet. At Div 1s and Prems, maybe the Jury Chair should keep all the rejected protest fees and protest forms and pay these to the governing body and cut the club out of the loop.

At a Div 3/4, you don't pay levies so the club absorb all of the MCD but do benefit from an additional entry from the paddler. For a Div 2/3, you £3 MCD is proportioned in the same way as the levies so 60% to club and 40% levies in levies. This seems fair.

[Nick Taylor]

Anyone got any Div 3 & Div 4 issues to raise?
As Lower Divisions rep on the Slalom Committee I'm interested in Anything & Everything that has an impact on any aspect of Div 3 & Div events

It doesn't matter if you're a competitor, organiser, volunteer, parent or official - if you have an idea, suggestion, opinion or observation please share it with me.

What do you think about some of the things below - How Could Things Be Improved?
Entries, Bibs, Ranking, Promotion, BC Membership requirement, Safety, Welfare, TUTTI, First Aid, Levies, Judging, Couse Design, Practice, Protests

(One caveat – Please don’t use this thread to argue that a rule should be changed. as far as this discussion goes the rules are the rules; if you think that a rule has a negative impact please focus on that impact. There is almost certainly an existing thread where you can rant about a rule)