I have to ask a question here and this goes out to the game organizers.
Now, I work within the Insurance industry and am fully aware of H&S and all that is associated to it. My question is the following, if you own your own site you Should have Insurance and have carried out adequate safety checks as this would need to be checked if a claim were to occur, if its your own site and you dont have the cover then you are a fool but thats another story. The issue I see is that any organizer that wants to use some sort of MoD site or other type of venue must surely have had to show they have Public Liability Cover - I cannot believe that any person is let on site without showing this type of cover (I bet there are loads of tradesman type of people that are members here that are not let on site without showing their own cover).
So my real problem with all of this is that either the MoD sites Are not asking for any type of insurance cover OR said person has some sort of moody documentation ???
For North V South we have a full Health & Safety Policy, and extensive Risk Assessment amended for each event to take into account changing physical risks at the venue and changing risks associated with our activities and games. We have £5,000,000 public liability cover. We submit data sheets for all paintballs shot (there are natural water courses with fish and wildlife). All of this is required by our MOD license.
In addition, since 2013, when someone sent a dossier to the local licensing department with images of strippers and accusations of "lewd behaviour" (images of 2 guys doing air guitar on stage who got over zealous!) - we now have a full Event Plan, Protection of Minors policy, and operate with an official Event Notice granted by the County Council, We liaise with local Trading Standards (alcohol & minors) and local police (to monitor disruption to neighbours and local village). All of this is time consuming and costly, but worth it to know that everyone is safe and the authorities are on side. Also, since this years (2015) even we were informed that there was a hightened security state at the base and strongly prompted to suggest what we would be doing to recognise and deal with the increased threat whilst we were effectively the temporary custodians of the site (hence the additional security checks on arrival).
So, how does TB get away with doing less? (as all accounts would suggest!) I have a simple explanation..
Although much of the MOD booking process is effectively outsourced to a Facilities Management company, the training areas fall into regions, There are different staff for each region and there are the local staff and Commandant for each training area - and there seems to be a site by site approach taken to many of these issues. To demonstrate this I will give an example...
Gareth from Urban uses MOD training areas and has been told by his local contacts that coloured paint may not be used and hence uses clear. In fact 7 years ago when Warped first approached the MOD we were told they didnt really care provided we left the area "as found". In other words we can shoot what we like provided its safe and we clean it up to their satisfaction. So from day one we had an agreement with our local Commandant to use coloured paint but clean it up. We spend 4-5 days post event cleaning up including jetwashing down the walls of the buildings which have been heavily used, roadsweeping the unbroken balls up. degreasing floors etc. The area is then inspected and signed off by MOD staff in sections.
We still use coloured paint and the commandant is still very happy. Im pretty sure that if we had gone year 2 to any other training area we would have made the same arrangement. If some areas are now "banning" coloured paint then I would suggest that has been down to local incidents or experience with other promoters since we started? We think that NvS would be a much poorer event with clear paint, which works well Im sure for smaller games where the "honour" system can be more effective. I believe clear paint for big games is nothing more than a con, charge more for the "special" clear ball and then also save thousands of pounds on clean-up !
Add regional staff views into the mix and its very possible that there are very varied approaches at different MOD sites, across a wide range of subjects including the whole H&S, insurance etc area. Although I have to say that the License we sign APPEARS to be universal which does puzzle me.
