Community Facility Supervision Questions Checklist

List every group that uses or would use the facility, and note whether an adult from that group is present throughout their session or only at the start.

Presence is usually assumed to come attached to the booking, and that assumption only gets tested on the session when something goes wrong.

Write down which uses are booked and which simply happen, since those two kinds of use are overseen in completely different ways in practice.

Booked use has a person attached to it and casual use has nobody, and most shared sites carry a mixture without ever having said so out loud.

Note who is present in the gap between one group leaving and the next arriving, since that changeover is where responsibility is least clear.

Changeovers are when gates stand open, equipment sits out and nobody on site considers themselves to be the person in charge.

Ask the relevant authority and the governing body what oversight is expected for the kinds of use you have written down.

Expectations differ by activity, by age group and by who owns the land, so the answer has to come from them rather than from another site.

What supervision an activity or an age group calls for is established by the relevant authority and the governing body, not settled by a committee.

Record whether anyone is present because of a written arrangement or simply because one particular person has always turned up.

An arrangement resting on a single willing individual looks solid until that person stops coming, which tends to happen without warning.

Note which sessions involve children, and treat every question about their oversight as one for the relevant authority rather than for this record.

Safeguarding arrangements and any checks people need are matters for the relevant authority and the governing body; nothing written here settles them.

Stand at each place an adult would realistically be, such as a kitchen window, a staff room, a car park or a doorway, and note which parts of the facility are visible.

Sightlines get described in meetings from memory and are almost always wrong; standing in the place itself settles the question properly.

Record the corners that cannot be seen from anywhere people normally are, and mark them on a sketch rather than trusting anyone to remember.

The unseen corner is where equipment gathers, where damage appears and where users say they feel uneasy, and it is fixed by layout.

Note what a proposed store, fence, hedge or planting would block, and raise that at the point positions are being discussed with the designer.

New elements change sightlines permanently, and the moment to say so is while positions are still drawings rather than foundations.

Walk the site once after the light has gone and record which parts disappear entirely, since evening use is when sightlines matter most.

Whether lighting is appropriate at this site, and what installing it would involve, is for qualified professionals and the local authority to establish.

Note whether the people overseeing use would be indoors or outdoors, and whether they can hear the area as well as see it.

Most things are noticed by ear before they are noticed by eye, and an indoor vantage point removes that entirely.

Record any place where somebody could be present on the site without being noticed from the buildings around it, and describe it plainly.

Describing these places in writing gives the designer something concrete to respond to instead of a general worry about overlooking.

Write down who unlocks the facility for each kind of use, and whether that is a defined role or one particular willing person.

If unlocking is a person rather than a role, the facility closes the moment that person is unavailable or moves away.

Record who does the final walk round when a session ends, and what they are actually expected to look at before leaving.

A closing routine that has never been written down varies with whoever is doing it, which is how things get left out overnight.

Note what currently happens when a group finishes later than expected and the person holding the keys has already gone.

The overrun arrangement is invented on the spot the first time it happens and then quietly becomes the way things are done.

Decide how a gate left open would be noticed, and by whom, instead of assuming that somebody passing would spot it and act.

Open gates are seen by many people and reported by none, because nobody is sure whether it was meant to be open.

Record whether the facility is left open on purpose at any point, and note who made that decision and when it was last considered.

Whether an area may be left open with nobody present is a question for the relevant authority, the landowner and your insurer rather than a committee choice.

Note where the keys are kept between sessions and how somebody unfamiliar with the site would get hold of one at short notice.

Key arrangements that only regulars understand exclude new user groups and collapse entirely when the regular is away.

Record what the site is used for when nobody has organised anything, including any evidence you find on the ground in the morning.

Litter, scuffs and moved equipment are the honest record of out of session use, and they are usually cleared before anyone looks at them.

Note marks, worn lines, damage and moved equipment that indicate who is using the space and roughly when they are doing it.

Wear patterns show where people actually go, which often differs from the routes and areas the group intended them to use.

Decide whether informal use is something the group welcomes, tolerates or wants to discourage, and write down which of the three it is.

Groups routinely hold all three positions at once, and the difference only surfaces once fencing and gates are being specified.

Ask a qualified professional and the local authority what use outside organised sessions means for how this facility should be arranged.

How a facility open to informal use should be arranged is established by qualified professionals and the local authority, never copied from elsewhere.

Record whether neighbours have raised anything about use outside sessions, and keep what they said in their own words.

Neighbours see the site at times the committee never does, and their account is the closest thing to a continuous record.

Note whether the facility is visible from a public route or path, and whether that has helped or hindered on this site so far.

Passive overlooking from a public route cuts both ways, and what has actually happened here is better evidence than general belief.

Write down the name and role of the person a user would contact with a concern, and check whether that name is still current.

Contact names on shared facilities outlive the people in the role, and nobody notices until a report goes nowhere.

Note where that contact is shown, such as on a notice at the gate, in a booking confirmation, or nowhere at all.

A route only exists if a user can find it while standing at the facility, not if it exists in committee papers.

Decide what happens to a report that arrives when the school office is closed or the committee is not meeting.

Most concerns arise in the evening or at a weekend, which is exactly when the usual route is unattended.

Record how a concern about behaviour is passed on and to whom, and confirm that route with the relevant authority rather than inventing one.

How concerns about behaviour or about people are handled is set by the relevant authority and the governing body; this record does not establish it.

Note whether reports are written down anywhere at all, and who actually reads what has been written.

A record nobody reads gives the appearance of an arrangement without any of the effect, which is worse than having none.

Decide how somebody who reported something finds out what happened next, since silence is the usual reason people stop reporting.

The second report depends entirely on what happened after the first one, and that is a decision the group can make now.

List everyone who currently holds a key, including former committee members and departed staff nobody has thought to ask.

Key lists are made once and never revised, so the real number of holders grows steadily and invisibly over time.

Note whether an entry combination is passed informally between users, and whether anybody knows how widely it has travelled.

A combination shared once is shared permanently, and the group usually finds this out from someone who should not have been able to get in.

Decide who is responsible for changing access arrangements when somebody leaves the group, and record that as part of the role.

Handover of access is nobody's job by default, which is why it is the task most often left undone after a committee change.

Record what access a contractor would have during any works and who from the group would be present on site while they are there.

Access to a working area is normally controlled by the contractor; ask what they allow rather than assuming the group may attend while work is under way.

Note whether the same key opens the store, the gate and anything else on site, and record whether that was intended.

Combined access is convenient until one group needs the gate but not the store, and by then the locks are already in place.

Write down where a spare is kept and who could reach it outside the times the site is normally staffed.

The spare is what turns a lost key into an inconvenience rather than a cancelled session for every group booked in.

Write the oversight arrangement down in plain language rather than leaving it as something everybody currently on the committee happens to know.

Unwritten arrangements are re-invented by each new group, usually in a weaker form than the one that was working.

Record when the arrangement was last discussed and who agreed to it, so the next committee knows what it is inheriting.

A dated record shows whether an arrangement was considered recently or has simply been carried forward unexamined.

Note which parts of the arrangement depend on one named individual continuing to be available, and mark those clearly.

Naming the dependency is more useful than pretending it does not exist, because it shows the group exactly where it is fragile.

Decide who introduces a new user group to the arrangements, and what that group is told before their first session takes place.

New groups adopt whatever they see on their first visit, so the introduction sets their habits for as long as they stay.

Agree in writing how a change to the arrangement would be made and who would have to be told about it afterwards.

Changes made informally leave half the users working to the old arrangement, which is how gaps in oversight appear.