How a Lincoln badminton club stopped leaving juniors at away venues

Joanne Pryce is welfare officer at Witham Shuttles Junior Badminton Club in Lincoln, which has 64 players aged eight to 16 and four teams in the county junior league. On Saturday 20 January 2024, an 11-year-old waited 55 minutes in a leisure centre foyer in Boston, 35 miles from home, because two parents each thought the other was driving him back.

Where the club started

Joanne, a practice manager at a GP surgery, became welfare officer in 2022 after two years as a parent helper. The club trains on Tuesday and Thursday evenings in a school sports hall and plays Saturday fixtures from October to March, half of them away in Boston, Grantham, Louth and Spalding.

Lifts were sorted the way most junior clubs sort them.

• On Friday evening each team's coach posted "who can drive tomorrow?" in a WhatsApp group.
• Parents replied with spare seats. Late additions came in on Saturday morning.
• Nobody recorded who was bringing each child home.
• Booster seats were whatever drivers happened to have in the boot.

What went wrong in Boston?

The under-13 fixture finished at 12.40pm. The coach, who had a second match in Lincoln that afternoon, left at 12.50pm. Two parents who had driven players there each understood that the other was taking Sam, an 11-year-old, home with them. Both left with full cars.

Sam sat in the foyer. A parent from the home club noticed him at 1.30pm, asked who was collecting him and stayed with him while his mum drove from Lincoln. She arrived at 2.20pm.

Nobody was hurt, and Joanne is careful to say no one was careless. But when she asked around, she found two other occasions that season where a child had waited more than 20 minutes for a lift that had not been arranged, and one Saturday in December when a parent drove four juniors to Grantham with two booster seats between them.

"Everyone assumed someone else had it. That's the honest version. Our handbook said transport was the parents' job, so the club never looked at the journey home, and that's exactly where it went wrong."

What Witham Shuttles set up in Bitir

Joanne drafted the policy in February 2024 using the gov.uk rules on child car seats and the steps in our guide to a lift-sharing and transport policy for clubs. The committee adopted it in May, and the club moved its teams onto Bitir for the September 2024 season.

1. An approved driver list. 21 adults, each known to the club, with a full licence and confirmation that their insurer knows they give occasional lifts. The four coaches who regularly drive squads also hold DBS checks.
2. Consent once a season. Families tick transport consent when they renew in September and can name anyone they do not want driving their child. 61 of 64 families completed it in the first fortnight. The other three drive their own children.
3. Club booster seats. Six high-back boosters bought for £198, kept in the kit store and handed out with the shuttlecock bag.
4. A lift sheet that closes on Thursday. Every player gets a named lift there and a named lift home by 6pm on the Thursday before an away fixture. The team manager messages any family still missing a line that evening.
5. The last-adult rule. The team manager ticks each child off as they leave and goes last. Coaches with a second fixture hand the job to a named parent before they go.
6. Mileage, not a whip-round. Drivers claim 45p a mile from the treasurer, in line with HMRC's approved rate, instead of collecting £3 a child at the car.

What changed in the numbers?

Joanne compared the 2023-24 season with 2024-25.

The one fixture that missed the deadline was a rearranged under-15 match in Spalding, confirmed with only two days' notice. The lift sheet was complete by Friday lunchtime.

The drop in withdrawals surprised the committee most. In 2023-24 the under-11s twice played a player short in Louth because a lift fell through at 8am. In 2024-25 the four withdrawals were illness or car trouble reported before 8am, and each time a reserve with a confirmed lift took the place.

"Thursday at six is the bit parents noticed. If your child's line is empty, you hear from the team manager that evening, not from a panicked chat on Saturday morning."

What Joanne does in Bitir

• Fixtures on each team's channel with the date, venue and meeting time, and the lift sheet alongside.
• A pinned post in the coaches' channel with the transport policy and the last-adult rule.
• Player profiles holding transport consent and any excluded drivers, visible to team managers only.
• Dated tasks reminding each team manager to chase missing lifts at 6pm on Thursday.
• Attendance registers used as the departure check at the end of each away fixture.
• Roles marking the approved drivers, so a team manager can see who can take an extra child.

What she would tell another club

• Write down the journey home, not just the journey there. That is where children get left.
• Close the lift sheet two days out, so there is time to fix the gaps.
• Buy booster seats. It is the cheapest safety spend a junior club will make.
• Pay mileage through the treasurer rather than cash at the car.
• Never let "transport is the parents' responsibility" mean nobody is watching.

What's next

For the 2025-26 season the club has added the transport policy to its risk assessment for club sessions, and Joanne has shared the lift sheet template with two other clubs in the county league. She is also looking at a minibus share with a neighbouring club, which she expects to take longer, since two of the volunteer drivers would need to check their D1 entitlement first.

Related reading: lift-sharing and transport policy for clubs, and late collection policy for children's clubs.