Accident and Incident Reporting for Clubs and Classes: What to Record, Who to Tell and How Long to Keep It

In April 2023 the UK government published its first concussion guidelines for grassroots sport, built around one line: "If in doubt, sit them out." They say a player with suspected concussion should not return to competitive sport before day 21. That only works if someone wrote down which day was day one, and in most clubs the accident book is a paper pad in a biscuit tin in the kit container.

Why does a small club need an accident record at all?

Three reasons, and only one of them is legal.

The first is the child. A parent picking up a nine-year-old who fell off the beam deserves to hear what happened from the coach, not to find a bruise at bath time. The second is pattern-spotting: a club that logs every incident finds out that four of the last six happened on the same mat join or the same bend of the track, and fixes it. The third is the claim that might arrive years later. Under the Limitation Act 1980 an adult has three years to bring a personal injury claim, but for a child the clock only starts at 18. Your insurer will ask for a record made at the time, and a memory from five seasons ago is not one.

Most clubs have the book. What they lack is a record they can find again.

What should go in the report?

Seven fields, written as facts. Anything longer stops being filled in by the third week.

1. Who was hurt, with age group or class.
2. When and where: date, time and the exact spot ("vault runway, landing end", not "the hall").
3. What they were doing at the time.
4. What happened, in plain words, without opinions about whose fault it was.
5. First aid given, by whom, and whether they carried on, sat out or went home.
6. Witnesses: the coach, a helper, another parent.
7. Who told the parent or emergency contact, how and at what time.

Add a near-miss box. A child who nearly hit the wall on a bike is free information about the wall.

Who needs to know, and how quickly?

The parent, the same day. The welfare officer, if anything about the incident suggests a safeguarding concern. Sometimes the governing body or the insurer. Rarely the Health and Safety Executive.

On that last one, people overcorrect. RIDDOR places reporting duties on employers, the self-employed and people in control of work premises. A club run only by volunteers is not normally covered. A club that employs a coach, or trains at a leisure centre whose operator is covered, may be pulled in: when a member of the public is taken straight from the scene to hospital because of a work activity, the duty holder has to report it. Check your governing body's guidance and your insurer's policy wording, and keep the club's own record regardless.

Keep accidents and welfare concerns in separate places. If a coach notices an injury that a child cannot explain, or an explanation that does not fit, that is a safeguarding referral to the welfare officer, following the NSPCC Child Protection in Sport Unit guidance. It does not belong in the accident log, where the coaches who read it may include the person the concern is about.

What changes when it is a head injury?

Everything speeds up, and the coach stops being the decision-maker.

The UK Concussion Guidelines for Non-Elite (Grassroots) Sport say a participant with suspected concussion should be removed immediately and not return that day, should contact NHS 111 within 24 hours, and should not go back to competitive sport before day 21, after a graduated return. They apply to every sport, not only the contact ones. For a club the practical consequences are a dated record of the injury, a written note to the parent that same evening, and a flag next to the child's name so that the coach taking the session on day 12 does not put them in a race.

Welfare officers we speak to often say something like this: "The hard part was never the first aid. It was the Tuesday coach not knowing what had happened on Saturday."

How long should you keep the records, and where?

Our position is firm: keep every record about a child until their 22nd birthday, and records about adults for four years. The legal minimum for a child's claim runs to 21, and the extra year covers a claim issued on the last day and served afterwards. We would rather a club store a few hundred extra lines than be the club that shredded the one page it needed.

Where matters as much as how long. An accident record is health data about a named person, which the ICO treats as special category data under UK GDPR. A loose sheet in a tin fails both tests: anyone opening the container can read it, and nobody can search it. A photo of the page posted in the team WhatsApp group is worse.

What does this look like at a real club?

Take Millbrook Trampoline Club in Swindon: 92 members aged 6 to 17, 11 coaches, four sessions a week in a school sports hall. Until last season its accident book was a carbon-copy pad kept in the equipment cupboard, and two pages from the previous autumn could not be found when a parent's insurer asked about a sprained wrist.

This season the head coach moves the record into a coaches-only channel. A pinned post holds the seven-field template, so after a session the coach in charge copies it, fills it in and posts it, with a photo of the spot if that helps. The session's attendance register already shows who was in the hall. The parent gets a private message before the coach leaves the building, and suspected head injuries get a "day 21" date written into the first line. By February the channel holds 31 reports. Nine of them happened on the same end of trampoline three, where the safety mat had shrunk away from the frame by about 15 cm. The club replaced the mat in the half-term holiday.

Where does Bitir fit in?

Bitir does not replace your first-aider or your insurer. It gives the record somewhere sensible to live.

A private Bitir channel for coaches keeps reports away from parents and members, and the owner decides who is in it. Attendance shows who was present at each session, the activity form collects emergency contacts and medical details before the season starts, and managers message a parent one to one, so the same-day note does not go into a group chat. Our guides to keeping member contact, medical and consent records and safeguarding-aware communication for youth groups cover the joining paperwork and the messaging rules around it.

Related reading: how a Leicester BMX club stopped losing its accident records, and how a Derby gymnastics club organised its squads and parents.