Paddle UK, the British Stand Up Paddleboard Association, and Surfing England have launched a new, collaborative online incident reporting system for paddlesport. The system aims to create a streamlined approach towards incident reporting by providing one place to report all paddlesport related incidents. The system is available via the Paddle UK website and can be used by anyone to report an incident or notable event which occurred during any paddlesport activity.
Reporting an incident will help these organisations to monitor incidents and provide more effective support where required. It will also aid in identifying any trends or recurring issues. We would like to encourage everyone to use the system whether you are a member of Paddle UK, BSUPA and Surfing England or not. By joining together we hope that the new system will empower the entire paddlesport community to take a proactive role in preventing accidents and improving water safety.
Incident reporting provides extremely valuable insight into the types of incident and injury taking place on and around the water. The system also allows for near misses or notable events to be reported which helps to illustrate where an incident almost occurred or injury was narrowly avoided. Data received from these incident reports will be used to ensure guidance and best practice are up to date.
“Over the past few years we have seen attitudes towards water safety and incident reporting greatly improve. We believe the new system will go even further towards increasing the range of incident reports received, which in turn will enable us to share wider learnings with the whole paddlesport community” – Lee Pooley