As the four Awarding Bodies for caving, mountain biking, mountaineering and paddlesport, British Caving, British Cycling, British Canoeing Awarding Body and Mountain Training are delighted to announce the establishment of shared guidance for activity delivery. Referred to as the ‘qualifications matrices’, each awarding organisation has publicly shared its own matrix of minimum qualifications for delivery of each discipline, along with a shared person specification and shared guidance. Collectively, this information provides a clear and consistent picture of what’s expected of an individual delivering sessions to others.

Adventure sport providers and instructors often work across several disciplines and the four adventure sports have therefore collaborated over the last six months to develop guidance that provides very consistent advice, followed by the specifics for a particular activity. John Cousins, Chief Executive of Mountain Training UK & Ireland said,

We hope that this information will ensure that activity providers and accreditation inspectors can access consistent, up to date information on the recommended qualifications for a specific activity or discipline, as well as links to the other qualification matrices.

The Health and Safety Executive are amongst several sources who have recently confirmed that the historic qualification matrices that have been used for accreditation and inspections are no longer being maintained and would soon be withdrawn.

Lee Pooley, Director of Coaching and Qualifications at British Canoeing said,

Our new guidance and matrices should assist activity providers whose responsibility it is to have robust and appropriate methods to demonstrate the competence of those leading activities.

Dan Cook, Leadership and Off-Road Technical Lead at British Cycling explained,

It should enable individual instructors, coaches and leaders to operate as both activity providers and, where appropriate, to act in various supervisory roles with confidence.

These matrices cover the qualification, the environment in which they have been assessed to operate and the appropriate ongoing competences required.

George Plant, chair of British Caving’s Qualification Management Committee noted that,

Because each matrix is managed by the respective awarding organisation, we can ensure it is maintained and kept up to date. We are in contact with the range of adventure accreditation bodies with the expectation that they will promote these pages across the UK.

Please click the following logos to access the qualification matrices: