Photo and Video Consent for Children's Clubs: What to Ask, Record and Share

The NSPCC's guidance for anyone working with children is plain: for under-16s, get parental consent before taking, using or sharing a photo, and ask the child too. Most clubs did, once, on a joining form. The trouble is that the form was signed when the child was six, it had one tick box, and nobody can find it now.

Do you actually need consent to photograph children at a club?

For anything you share, yes. Treat it as a requirement.

The NSPCC's photography and sharing images guidance says children should always be consulted about the use of their image, that under-16s also need parental consent, and that for 16 and 17 year olds the organisation should decide whether parental consent is appropriate and consider telling parents either way. It also recommends a written, dated record and an explanation of how consent can be withdrawn.

The data protection side is less tidy. The ICO's guidance on children and the UK GDPR treats a child's photo as their personal data and asks organisations to think about whether the child is competent to decide for themselves. In Scotland, section 208 of the Data Protection Act 2018 presumes a child of 12 or over has that understanding. Consent is not always the right lawful basis for every use, and a club with a solicitor on the committee may pick another. For publishing a child's face on the internet, though, consent is the basis parents understand and the one you can defend at a committee meeting.

Our position: from 12, ask the child directly as well as the parent, everywhere in the UK, not only in Scotland. A 13-year-old who does not want to be on the club's Instagram should not need a parent to say it for them.

What should a photo consent form actually ask?

Three separate permissions, a names rule and a way out.

• Private sharing. Photos and short videos shared only with families in the child's own group or squad.
• Public club channels. The club website, public social media accounts and noticeboards in public places.
• Press and professional photography. The local paper, a governing body's magazine, a photographer hired for a show or tournament. The NSPCC notes these may need fresh consent at the time anyway.

Then state the names rule rather than asking about it. We would argue that public posts should never carry a child's full name, whatever the form says, and that first names only should go with group shots, not close-ups. A name plus a face plus the club's kit tells a stranger exactly where to find a child on a Saturday morning.

Finally, say how to withdraw consent and what happens next. The honest version, which the NSPCC also asks for, is that a photo already printed or posted publicly is very hard to recall. Saying so on the form makes the public tick a real decision.

What do you do about the children who say no?

Keep them in everything except the camera roll.

A child without consent still plays, performs and goes on the trip. The practical job is making sure the person holding the camera knows who that child is, at the moment they are taking pictures. Lists in a folder do not work at the side of a pitch. The NSPCC suggests a sticker or badge, and many clubs use a coloured wristband or a different-coloured bib for warm-ups. Then crop, reframe or retake rather than blurring faces afterwards, which tends to draw more attention to the child than it removes.

Some refusals come with a reason a club must respect without asking: a child in care, a family fleeing domestic abuse, a court order. Treat every no as one of those.

Where should club photos be shared?

Mostly in private. Families want the photos; strangers do not need them.

A parents' WhatsApp group feels private and is not. Every photo lands in every member's camera roll, it can be forwarded in two taps, and a group that has grown to 130 people over three seasons usually includes adults whose children left long ago. A private, invite-only channel per squad, where the club controls who is in it and can remove a photo for everyone, does the job most families care about. Welfare officers we speak to say some version of the same thing: "The photos were never the problem. Not knowing where they had ended up was."

Public posts then become a small, deliberate set: consented children, no full names, and posted after the event rather than live. "Under-10s at training now on the school field" is a timetable for anyone reading.

What does this look like for a real club?

Take Ashby Road Gymnastics in Loughborough: 74 gymnasts aged 5 to 15, four coaches, two weekday sessions and a Saturday squad. The old joining form had one line, "I consent to my child being photographed", ticked by 71 families at various points since 2019.

In the first week of September the club sends a new consent request to every family with the three permissions above, and a short question for every gymnast aged 12 and over. By the end of the month all 74 have answered. 70 say yes to private sharing, 58 to public posts, 49 to press. Four children have no photo consent at all, and two of the 12-plus gymnasts said no to public posts even though their parents said yes; the club goes with the child.

Those four wear a purple scrunchie or wristband at sessions and at the December display. Each coach has the list on their phone, and the head coach checks every public post against the 58 before it goes up. The display photos go into each group's private channel the same evening, and six of them, all of consented children, go on the club's public page on the Monday.

Where does Bitir fit in?

It keeps the consent, the list and the photos in the same place.

Bitir's Activity form widget has a Parent consent starting point: a consent statement the parent ticks, plus your own questions, so the three permissions sit on one card in the channel. Managers see who has submitted and who is still pending, and can export the responses as a CSV for the safeguarding file. Each squad can be an invite-only channel, so photos shared there stay with the families in it, and a manager can remove a post for everyone. A joining agreement can carry the club's photography rules for parents at events, and when you change the text, members are asked to accept the new version. Our guide to member records, medical notes and consent covers the rest of the annual record, and safeguarding-aware communication for youth groups covers the messaging side.

Related reading: how a Pontypridd rugby club rebuilt photo consent for 168 juniors, and how an Exeter hockey club took 42 juniors to an away festival without the chaos.