Hot Weather Policy for Clubs: Decide the Night Before, Not at the Gate

On 19 July 2022 the UK recorded 40.3°C at Coningsby in Lincolnshire, the first reading above 40°C on record, and a year later UKHSA and the Met Office launched colour-coded heat-health alerts. Clubs now have a shared trigger. What most of them still lack is a written answer to "what do we do on an amber day?"

Why does a club need a written hot weather policy?

Because without one, the decision gets made at the gate by whoever turns up first, and it gets made differently every time.

One coach sends the under-9s home. Another carries on with the under-13s on the 3G pitch at 2pm because "they're fine, they've got water". A parent who drove 25 minutes finds the session cancelled by a message posted 40 minutes before kick-off. None of these coaches is careless. They just have nothing written down to point to, so each one guesses, and the guesses do not match.

A policy fixes that. It does not need to be long. It needs to say what triggers a change, who decides, by when, and what changes.

What should trigger a change?

Use the alert that already exists. Since 2023, the UK Health Security Agency's heat-health alerts have graded hot spells in England as green, yellow, amber or red, based on the expected impact on health rather than a single temperature. They run through the summer, cover each region separately and anyone can subscribe by email. A club that writes "amber alert for the East of England" into its policy has a trigger nobody can argue about on the day.

Then add one local check, because the alert describes a region and your session happens on one patch of ground. Artificial pitches, tarmac courts and sports halls with no air conditioning run far hotter than a shaded grass field. If the venue itself has no shade, treat it as one level higher than the alert. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland do not use the same alert system, so clubs there should use Met Office warnings and the forecast for the venue with the same three levels.

Who decides, and by when?

One named person, by 4pm the day before. That is the whole rule.

One person, because a decision shared between three coaches in a group chat is a decision nobody owns. The day before, because families need an evening to find a hat, freeze a water bottle or arrange a different drop-off time, and because heat-health alerts normally go out a day or more ahead of the hot weather. Have a named deputy for when the decision-maker is away. If the forecast changes overnight, the same person can raise the level by 7am, but should never lower it on the morning itself: a family that has already rearranged its day for an 8am start should not be told at breakfast that 10am is back on.

What changes at each level?

1. Yellow. A shaded drinks break every 20 minutes, called by the coach. Every child brings a named, full water bottle. Sun cream applied at home, hats on between drills, no long spells standing in the sun waiting for a turn.
2. Amber. Move outdoor sessions out of 11am to 4pm, either to an early start or to the evening. Cut the hardest conditioning work. Drinks every 15 minutes. Shorten the session if it cannot move.
3. Red. Outdoor sessions come off. An indoor session goes ahead only in a space that is cooler than outside.

Write the levels down for every kind of session you run, because a 45-minute toddler gym class and a six-hour holiday camp need different answers. Your risk assessment for club sessions is the right home for the reasoning. The policy is the short version a coach reads on a phone.

Is moving a session better than cancelling it?

We think so, and by a wide margin. A cancelled session on a hot Saturday pushes children onto a different field with no coach, no shade plan and no water check. A session moved to 8.30am runs in the coolest part of the day with all of those things in place. Cancelling feels safest for the club. It is often not safest for the child.

The exception is a red alert, or a venue where no cooler slot exists. Then cancel early and say so plainly, using the same steps as any other cancelled session or schedule change.

How do coaches spot heat illness?

The NHS guidance on heat exhaustion and heatstroke lists the early signs: headache, dizziness, feeling sick, heavy sweating, cramps, fast breathing and being very thirsty. In children, the NHS adds floppiness and sleepiness. The response is to move them somewhere cool, lie them down with their feet raised, give water or a sports drink, and cool their skin.

They should start to feel better within 30 minutes. If they do not, or if they feel hot but have stopped sweating, become confused, have a seizure or lose consciousness, call 999. That is heatstroke, and it is an emergency. Coaches we speak to often say something like: "The child who worried me wasn't the one complaining. It was the quiet one sitting down at the end of the line."

What does this look like at a real club?

Take Fernbrook Junior Tennis Club, a fictional but typical club in Reading with 86 juniors and a summer camp that runs 9am to 3pm for three weeks in August. In the old setup the head coach looked at the sky each morning. The written policy now says: on yellow, drinks every 20 minutes and the 12.30pm match play moves under the clubhouse canopy; on amber, the camp runs 8am to 12.30pm and families collect early; on red, it moves to the school sports hall next door, which the club has a standing booking for.

The head coach checks the alert at 3pm, sets each day's level on the camp's sessions in Bitir by 4pm, and families get one message with the new times and the reminder to bring a bottle. Every coach's phone shows today's level alongside the register, and any first aid goes on the child's record that afternoon.

How does Bitir help?

In Bitir the policy is pinned in the coaches' channel, so every coach can read the three levels without hunting for a PDF. A schedule change on a session reaches every family in the group in one message, and the attendance register shows who actually came, which matters when a camp starts two hours early. A dated task reminds the decision-maker to check the alert on days when the forecast looks hot, and any heat-related first aid goes on the member's record the same day, alongside the medical notes covered in our guide to medicines and allergies in children's clubs.

Related reading: how a Kent cricket club wrote its hot weather policy after a heat exhaustion case at a junior festival, and how a Wirral walking football club rebuilt its emergency plan.