Risk assessment

The Risk tab starts an assessment from the hazards nearly every Scout camp shares — site features, water, fires, mallets, tools, sleeping arrangements, adults, incidents and the rest. They all start included, because the hazard nobody thought of shouldn't also be the one that never appears. Edit any control to fit your site, add hazards of your own, and remove the ones that genuinely don't apply.

What you save is a snapshot. If we improve a control next month, an assessment you've already signed doesn't change underneath you.

Camp Planner then reads what your camp already knows and puts a note beside the rows it bears on — your kit list has cooking stoves and gas, so the open fires row gets a question about fuel storage; your site plan marks a campfire; your roster is short of the usual ratio for the section. If something your camp is bringing points at a hazard that isn't in the assessment at all, that gets called out above the rows, because that's the one thing your own data can spot that re-reading your list can't.

These are questions, not edits. Nothing is changed for you, and a note you disagree with is a note you ignore — if you removed a hazard deliberately, leave it removed.

Where medical details are involved you'll only ever see a count — “16 people have a medical condition recorded” — never a name or a condition, and only if your role lets you see medical data at all. Helpers and viewers see no medical note rather than a misleading empty one.

Export it on the standard four-column template as either a Word document — for when you've still got site-specific detail to add — or a PDF for sending on and printing, ready to log with your District Commissioner. Both say exactly the same thing, and the last column is left blank on purpose, because that's the one you fill in by hand at camp as things change. It also appears in the printable camp pack.

If your camp has a programme filled in, Camp Planner can read it and suggest hazards the assessment doesn't cover yet. Suggestions arrive as drafts you accept or reject one at a time — nothing is added to your assessment until you say so, and dismissing one stops it coming back. They're written by a language model, which the panel says plainly, so read them properly before adding them. This part needs a paid plan; everything else on this page doesn't.

Adventurous activities are refused, not generated. If your programme mentions climbing or abseiling, aerial runways and rope courses (zip wires, high ropes, Jacob's ladders), water activities, archery or shooting, caving, hillwalking, toboggan runs and snow sports, air activities or motorised activities, Camp Planner tells you it needs a separate assessment from whoever holds the relevant permit — and won't write one. The list grows as real camps turn up activities it didn't know about, so treat it as a safety net rather than the definitive word: if something on your programme needs a permit, it needs one whether or not we spotted it. That warning is free, works without a paid plan, and shows up whether or not you ever ask for suggestions.

The reminder that goes out a week before your camp now mentions the risk assessment too — if you haven't started one, or if the review date you set has passed. A review date falling after the camp isn't mentioned, because there's nothing useful you can do about it while you're packing.

This is a starting point, not a finished assessment. It doesn't check your Nights Away Permit, tell your DC, or replace an activity-specific assessment — climbing, water activities, shooting and the like need their own, from whoever holds the permit. The name on the document is yours, and so is the judgement behind it.