Risk-benefit assessment template

Water and ponds

The most consistently loved part of the session, and the one most often cancelled by a form.

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

This column is why the activity happens. Write yours before you write a single hazard.

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	Deep or fast water Cold water	Drowning, including in very shallow water Cold water shock Hypothermia	3	1	3	Depth and flow checked ON THE DAY, by an adult, especially after rain. Not from memory, not from last term. Ratio tightened at the water: 1:2 or 1:1 for EYFS, and one adult whose only job is watching the water. In/out boundary marked physically and walked with the children before anyone goes in. Time in the water capped in cold months. Warm drink and dry clothes to come back to. Wet child gets changed immediately. No negotiating, no 'in a minute'.	Low (1)
Moving around the bank	Slippery banks and rocks Undercut or steep banks	Falls Head injury Unintended entry into water	2	2	4	Entry and exit points chosen and shown, not improvised. Steep or undercut banks put out of bounds and physically marked.	Low (2)
Handling water and pond life	Waterborne infection Blue-green algae	Leptospirosis (Weil's disease) Gastric illness	3	1	3	Cuts and grazes covered with waterproof dressings BEFORE going in. Hand washing before eating, with clean water carried in. Every time. No stagnant water. No water at all during an algae bloom.	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, not an answer, and copying it unchanged would be a mistake. 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 carries a header before the table, and it earns its place: 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.

None of that is bureaucracy for its own sake. An assessment nobody signed and nobody reviewed is not an assessment, it is a document. And the review is where the near-misses you logged during the term finally do their job: they are the reason next year's version is better than this one.

Write it once. Stack it on every session.

Keep your assessments as a reusable library, stack the right ones onto each session (a frozen copy travels with the day), and log the dynamic call you make on the ground, offline, with cold hands. Free for practitioners, never per child.

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