On-line System for Race Organisers to Report Incidents
Tue 5 Nov 2024
As a part of how the fell racing community learns from issues, near misses and injuries that occur at races, we have for many years operated an Incident Reporting system. Incidents are documented by a Race Organiser to capture any sort of issue that occurs at their race.
We handle incidents along two tracks:
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Voluntary Reporting
These are for learning points that might be of interest to other Race Organisers and for potential disciplinary issues. Examples could be:
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Things which went particularly well
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Things which went badly (and how the problems could be overcome)
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Any ‘near misses’ in safety or any aspect of race organisation
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Any poor behaviour on the part of runners, including requests for the FRA to take disciplinary action
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Mandatory Reporting
These are the more serious matters, and if Race Organisers are aware of them at their race, it is mandatory for them to be reported:
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Any personal injury (whether to runners, officials or spectators) severe enough to need hospital or further treatment in the opinion of the first-aider at the event
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Near misses, with the potential to cause serious injury
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Damage to property likely to result in an insurance claim
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Dangerous occurrences
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Ill health and sickness
All these different types of Incidents are documented by Race Organisers and submitted to the FRA General Secretary. The Secretary then assesses each incident and decides on a course of action.
Whilst some incidents will simply be “noted” in the system, more often the information will be fed to an FRA sub-committee, such as the Safety, Rules and Equipment (SER) committee that meets regularly to develop our approach to rules and safety. Learning from what is happening “on the ground” at races around the country is crucial to the work of the SER committee and Incident Reporting plays a key role in this.
Until now, the Incident Reporting system involved filling out MS Word forms and emailing them to the FRA Secretary. To make incident reporting easier and to encourage more reporting of incidents, we are now offering an on-line version of the forms, available from the home page of the FRA website.
We hope that by making the process as easy as possible, this will encourage Race Organisers to use the system to report more near misses, positive learning points and others ideas that can then fed into the work of the FRA and the wider fell racing community that aims to make our races as safe, fair and enjoyable as possible.
Attached to this article is a screenshot from the FRA website homepage - at the bottom of the page - to show you where to find the "incident reporting" button.
