We’re at Leisure Industry Week. Are you?

If you’re a visitor to Leisure Industry Week (LIW) at the NEC in Birmingham this week, RoSPA’s leisure and play safety teams would love to meet you.

The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA) will be hosting a Health and Safety Clinic in the Attractions Lounge during the three days of LIW, which runs from Tuesday (September 24) to Thursday (September 26).

Here, you can meet members of RoSPA’s leisure and play safety teams who will be on hand to give tailored advice on the challenges affecting individual leisure facilities. Advice will cover play safety, swimming pools, activities for young people and more.

David Walker, RoSPA’s leisure safety manager, will also be hosting two workshops entitled “Learning the lessons – turning safety failings around”, during which he will use experiences from accident investigation and claims management to look at how accidents and ill health can affect a leisure operator and the critical steps to take following an incident. The sessions will take place on Tuesday (September 24) from 2.30-3.15pm in the Keynote Theatre and on Thursday (September 26) from 12.30-1.15pm in LIW Theatre 2.

David Walker said: “Gyms and leisure centres generally have a good record on safety. However, there are a few rare but serious incidents each year. Managing risk in the leisure sector is about striking the right balance between the health, wellbeing and challenge benefits and the potential injury-harm that could result. This risk-benefit analysis is crucial, otherwise risky activities could be stopped unnecessarily or, at the other end of the spectrum, unacceptable levels of harm could result.

“Leisure Industry Week provides a fantastic opportunity for us to speak to leisure operators about how to manage safety in a balanced way, in line with RoSPA’s guiding principle that life should be ‘as safe as necessary, not as safe as possible’.”

LIW is the annual meeting place for the leisure industry. It covers every aspect of leisure from health and fitness, to food and drink, wellbeing and the latest in family entertainment. If you haven’t already registered for free entry to attend LIW, you can do so online. Visit www.liw.co.uk for full details.