One area that is attracting a bit of attention is the Safeguarding of visiting bands (either an outing or quarter peal / peal attempt). The CCCBR advice is that “visiting bands are responsible for their own safeguarding, but the local church may ask for assurance”. It is the “assurance” that is causing issues, so we have worked with Chichester Diocese to come up with clear guidance on this.

The guidance can be found on the Chichester Diocese website (it's not obvious!).

It is, regrettably, quite a bit longer than I had hoped but it boils down to:

1. If you have no under 18s with you, no assurances are needed but you should make sure everyone signs the visitors book and keep your own list of attendees*.

2. If you have under 18s with you  you will state that you are:

1. Tower outing: complying with your own Parish Safeguarding Policy (no need to provide a copy - it is on your parish website)
2. SCACR District/Association outing: complying with the SCACR Safeguarding Policy (no need to provide a copy - it is on the SCACR website)
3. If you are a group of friends, then you will need to sign the Diocescan Safeguarding form within the document (note - this does not require you to have 2 DBS checked adults, or for people to have completed Safeguarding Training: that is good practice but not a legal requirement).

In return, the Parish you are visiting should provide you with a Health and Safety Risk assessment (this is not a safeguarding requirement) and should not place unaccompanied under 18s in contact with your group.

If you are visiting towers outside Sussex they may have different requirements.  However, any safeguarding issues that arise within your group during the visit should be reported back through SCACR or your Parish Safeguarding Officer. If the adult involved is from another diocese, Chichester will handle the issue on your behalf.

*  We are all keeping attendance records now. There are no rules about how long these should be kept, but it is best to consider them as part of the history of your tower and just keep them. At Heene, we started attendance and “methods rung” records after finding attendance records from the 1890s and thought we would leave our mark for the future.

Val Clay, SCACR Safeguarding Officer
May 2025