How the risk register works

Scouts asks every Trustee Board to keep a risk register: the things that could go wrong for the charity as a whole. It isn't a risk assessment, which is about one activity and belongs to the section. Camp Planner does those.

Trustees follows Scouts' own model. Each risk sits in one of six categories (external, operational, financial, legal and regulatory, governance, data protection). It's scored for impact (minor, important, significant, major) and likelihood (unlikely, possible, likely, highly likely), each 1 to 4, and the score is impact × likelihood + impact, from 2 to 20.

Score it before controls, write down the controls you already have, then score it again after controls. Scouts calls that the real level of risk, and it's the one the heat map and the agenda use. Add any further planned actions, a named owner on the board, and who is responsible for the actions, who may be somebody outside the board.

The colours are our banding of Scouts' score: 12 and over is high, 6 to 10 medium, below that low.