Risk-benefit assessment template
Water and ponds
The most consistently loved part of the session, and the one most often cancelled by a form.
Free. Edit it, sign it and use it on your sessions.
Water is the hazard people are most frightened of, and the one children get the most out of. That tension is exactly what a risk-benefit assessment is for. Written well, this is what lets you keep the stream play on the day the water is a little higher than usual, with an extra adult, instead of cancelling it.
This covers water as part of the session. Water merely present on the site is covered in the woodland site assessment.
Benefits of the experience
Write yours before you write the hazards.
- The single most reliable source of deep, absorbed, self-directed play in the whole session.
- Direct contact with a living ecosystem. Children who dip a pond care about ponds afterwards.
- Learning to judge cold, depth and footing for themselves, with an adult close by.
- It is very often the thing a child talks about at home that evening.
Hazards, controls and residual risk
Severity (S) and Likelihood (L) are each scored 1–3 and multiplied into a Risk Rating (RR). Low is 1–3, Medium 4–6, Significant 7–9. The final column is what is left after your controls, which is the number that matters.
| Experience / activity | Hazards | Associated risks | S | L | RR | Control actions | Risk after controls |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Being in or beside water |
|
|
3 | 1 | 3 |
|
Low (1) |
| Moving around the bank |
|
|
2 | 2 | 4 |
|
Low (2) |
| Handling water and pond life |
|
|
3 | 1 | 3 |
|
Low (1) |
The scoring key
Severity (S)
- 3 Death or major injury
- 2 Permanent disability or serious injury
- 1 Minor injury
Likelihood (L)
- 3 Occurs repeatedly
- 2 Will or could occur
- 1 Unlikely, though conceivable
Risk Rating (RR = S × L)
- 7–9 Significant
- 4–6 Medium
- 1–3 Low
What this template cannot know
Risk assessments are site-specific. This one is a starting point, so don't copy it unchanged. Before you sign anything, work out the following for your wood and your group:
- Your water: how deep, how fast, what the bottom is, and how it changes after rain.
- Whether it is fed by run-off from farmland or a road, which changes the infection picture entirely.
- Your entry and exit points, and where the bank is undercut.
- What lives in it, and what season it is. A pond in frogspawn season needs different handling.
Then put your name on it, date it, and set a review date. The assessment belongs to the person who signs it, which is you.
The paperwork around it
The taught form has a header before the table: the activity, the group, who carried the assessment out, the date it was written, the review frequency (annually is typical), the date it was last reviewed, a signature, and any other assessments it refers to. Your site assessment sits under all of your activity assessments, so name it here.
An assessment nobody has signed or reviewed won't stand up if anyone asks. At the review, use the near-misses you logged during the term to make next year's version better.
Write it once. Stack it on every session.
Keep your assessments as a reusable library, stack the right ones onto each session (the session keeps a copy of the version you used), and log the calls you make on the day, offline. Free for practitioners, never per child.
Ask for a template
Tell us the activity and we'll write it. You'll get an email when it's up.