Lift-Sharing for Away Fixtures: A Transport Policy Your Club Can Actually Run

In the UK a child must normally use a car seat until they are 12 years old or 135cm tall. That one rule catches out more volunteer drivers on a Saturday morning than anything else in a club's transport plan, and most clubs do not have a transport plan at all.

Why does a club need a transport policy at all?

Because the riskiest part of an away fixture is rarely the fixture.

Most clubs handle lifts in a group chat on Friday night. Somebody asks who has a spare seat, three parents reply, a fourth child gets added on Saturday morning and nobody writes down who is bringing whom home. It works until it does not: a nine-year-old left on a leisure centre bench because two parents each thought the other had him, a volunteer with four children and two booster seats, a driver nobody on the committee has ever met.

A transport policy does not need to be long. It answers four questions. Who may drive other people's children? What has to be true about the car? How does every child get a confirmed lift? And who checks that nobody is left behind?

Who should be allowed to drive other people's children?

Keep an approved driver list. An adult goes on it when they are known to the club, hold a full licence, have told their insurer they give occasional lifts, and have a DBS check if their role already needs one under your DBS checks for club volunteers policy. A parent giving a lift to their own child's teammates as a one-off arrangement between families does not need a DBS check. A volunteer the club regularly asks to drive squads does.

Then collect consent once a season, not every week. Each family agrees that their child may travel with approved drivers and can name anyone they do not agree to. The NSPCC Child Protection in Sport Unit advises planning journeys so that one adult is not alone with one child, and that is the right default. If a one-to-one lift cannot be avoided, the parent agrees to it in advance, the child sits in the back and the team manager knows the route and the expected arrival time.

Minibuses are a separate question. A driver who passed their car test after 1 January 1997 does not automatically hold the D1 entitlement, and a club that charges for minibus seats may need a Section 19 permit. Check both before the first trip, not in the car park.

What does the car seat law mean for volunteer drivers?

The gov.uk guidance on child car seats is clear: children must normally use a child car seat until they are 12 or 135cm tall, whichever comes first. The exceptions cover taxis, a short journey made out of unexpected necessity, and a car where two occupied child seats leave no room for a third. A lift to a fixture arranged on Wednesday is none of those.

So the driver needs a booster seat for every child under that line. The cheapest fix is for the club to buy four to six high-back boosters, keep them in the kit store and lend them out with the match bag. It costs a couple of hundred pounds once, and it removes the most common reason a lift falls through on the morning.

How should lifts be confirmed?

With a lift sheet that closes two days before the fixture. For a Saturday match that means Thursday at 6pm.

Every child on the squad list gets two lines: a named lift there and a named lift home. A parent driving their own child counts. A child with no lift by the deadline gets a direct message from the team manager on Thursday evening, not a general appeal in the chat on Saturday morning. Changes after the deadline go to the team manager, who updates the sheet. That way there is always one current version, and it is not buried 140 messages up a group chat.

Coaches we speak to often say something like: "Getting them there was never the problem. It was the drive home, when half the parents had left early and nobody had written anything down."

Should the club organise lifts, or leave it to parents?

Many club handbooks say "transport to fixtures is the responsibility of parents" and stop there. We think that is the wrong call. The club chose the venue, the kick-off time and the squad. It is the only party that knows which 12 children need to be in Boston by 9.30am. Disclaiming transport does not stop a child being stranded; it just means nobody was watching when it happened.

The club does not need to provide the cars. It needs to run the sheet, and to own one rule: the team manager is the last adult to leave the venue, and does not leave until every child has gone with their named lift or a parent. It is the same principle as a late collection policy, applied 30 miles from home.

How should volunteer drivers be paid?

Mileage, never a fare. HMRC's approved mileage rate lets an organisation reimburse volunteers up to 45p a mile for the first 10,000 miles in a tax year without it counting as income. Paying more than the rate, or charging families per seat, can turn a lift into driving for hire, which most private car insurance excludes. A flat "£5 per child" collected by the driver is exactly the arrangement to avoid.

What does this look like at a real club?

Take Ashgrove Juniors Netball, a fictional but typical club in Swindon with 52 players and Saturday league fixtures across Wiltshire. Each squad has a team manager. The approved driver list has 17 names, the club owns five high-back boosters, and every family ticked the transport consent when they renewed in September.

On Monday the team manager posts the squad for Saturday's away match at Devizes. Parents add themselves to the lift sheet by Thursday 6pm. At 6.15pm she messages the one family without a lift home and pairs them with a driver who has a spare seat and a spare booster. On Saturday she ticks each child off the sheet as they leave the sports centre and goes home last.

How does Bitir help?

In Bitir the fixture sits on the squad's channel with its date, venue and meeting time, and the transport policy is pinned in the coaches' channel. Each child's profile shows the transport consent and any named adults the family has excluded, visible to the team manager only. A dated task reminds the team manager to chase missing lifts at the Thursday deadline, and the attendance register for the fixture doubles as the departure check at the end, so the last adult knows exactly who has gone. When plans change late, one message reaches every family on the squad, using the same steps as any other group trip.

Related reading: how a Lincoln badminton club stopped leaving juniors at away venues, and how an Exeter hockey club took 42 juniors to an away festival.