Insurance
Walking: A low-risk activity
Overall, walking is one of the safest outdoor activities. It’s completely natural, doesn’t strain your body and doesn’t require sophisticated equipment or training.
Every year Ramblers volunteers organise over 500 led walks a week across the country and take tens of thousands of people out walking. But every year only around 15-20 “incidents” such as injuries or damage to property are reported to us, nearly all of them very minor. None of these incidents has led to a claim against the Ramblers in over five years.
However, even though walking is low risk, it’s still wise to take precautions to protect our members, our volunteers and the people who benefit from our services. There are two main ways of doing this
- By providing “best practice” guidelines to help our volunteers organise walks and other activities in a safe and responsible way.
- By taking out civil liability insurance to make sure that volunteers involved in organising activities on behalf of the Ramblers are not personally liable if an incident leads to a claim.
The issue of insurance and liability can generate great confusion and anxiety. We’re told we live in an increasingly litigious world, and whether or not this is true, people tend to focus on the risks of activities more than they did in the past. This in turn can lead to understandable concern that in organising activities for others, volunteers are putting themselves “on the line” with potentially serious consequences if things go wrong. But in fact many of the worries reported to us turn out to be unfounded.
The information in this section aims to explain civil liability insurance in a simple and easily understandable way, give practical advice on what it means for volunteers involved in Ramblers activities, deal with frequently asked questions and common sources of confusion and misunderstanding, and point to guidance that can help reduce the risk of incidents still further.