Community Site Waterlogging Questions Checklist

Agree one simple way of recording an observation that anybody can follow, rather than asking volunteers to fill in something detailed.

A method that takes a minute gets used; one that takes ten produces records for the first fortnight only.

Agree a few fixed positions that everybody photographs from, and either mark them on the ground or describe each one precisely enough to find.

Photographs taken from wherever somebody was standing cannot be compared, which is most of their value.

Record the date and what the weather had been doing before each observation, since ground behaviour depends on what preceded it.

The same corner reads as free draining after a dry week and as a swamp after a wet one.

Keep a simple plan of the site and mark water on a copy of it each time, rather than describing locations in words.

Marked plans overlay; verbal descriptions from different volunteers do not even agree with each other.

Note who made each observation and roughly what time of day it was, since two people describe the same standing water quite differently.

Attribution lets somebody weigh the record and put a follow-up question to the right person.

Keep everything in one place that the committee controls, rather than in the phone of whoever happened to be there.

Volunteer records are lost at the point a volunteer steps down, which is the least convenient moment.

Record every session cancelled, moved or shortened because of ground conditions, noting the date, who decided and which group lost out.

Cancellations are the clearest evidence a committee can assemble and are almost never written down.

Note which user groups lose sessions, since the same conditions fall unevenly across ages, sports and times of day.

Waterlogging typically removes the same groups repeatedly, and naming them changes the conversation.

Note which parts of the site are unusable rather than only that the site was closed, and mark those on the plan.

Partial loss is far more common than total loss and is invisible in a record that only says closed.

Record where displaced sessions went, whether that was elsewhere on the site, to another venue, or nowhere at all.

Where use goes instead shows the knock-on effect and is worth capturing while it is happening.

Note where use concentrates when part of the site is out of action, since that ground then carries more than it was expected to.

Waterlogging in one area quietly destroys another, and the connection is only visible in a record.

Keep the record to what happened rather than to what the committee believes is causing it, and label any theory as a theory.

A factual record survives scrutiny; one that leads with a diagnosis invites an argument about the diagnosis.

Walk the entire boundary, including the parts nobody uses, and photograph any ditch, bank, pipe end or low point you find.

Committees know the playing area and rarely know the edges, where most of the answer usually is.

Note the condition of any ditch without clearing, entering or altering it, recording only what you could see and the date you saw it.

The record is the contribution here; anything more is work for the party responsible for the ditch.

Ditches and watercourses have responsible parties and may be subject to requirements; nothing is cleared or altered without confirming that with the relevant authority.

Record where water appears to arrive onto the site from beyond the boundary, including from a road, track, field or neighbouring property.

Water arriving is a different problem from water not leaving, and the two are constantly confused.

Where water crosses a boundary, responsibility is a matter for the relevant authority and the parties involved rather than something this record can settle.

Record where water appears to leave the site, and note where you could not establish that it leaves at all.

An outfall nobody can find is one of the more common findings, and it is a finding rather than a gap.

Note any recent work beyond the boundary, including new buildings, paving, a track or changes to a field, with dates if known.

What arrives on a site changes when its surroundings change, and volunteers usually noticed it at the time.

Note whether anybody else nearby appears to be affected by the same conditions, and whether anyone from the group has spoken to them.

A shared problem involves different parties from a local one, and it is worth knowing which you have.

Establish who owns the land the site sits on, and write down how you established it rather than what everybody assumes.

Committees are regularly wrong about this, and everything downstream depends on getting it right.

Find the lease, licence or agreement under which the group uses the site, and note what it says about maintenance and the ground.

The document frequently answers questions the committee has been debating for years.

What any lease or agreement requires is a matter for the parties to it and their own advisers, and varies by site.

Establish who would be expected to arrange and pay for investigation or work, and whether anybody has been asked that directly.

The question is frequently avoided by everybody, which is how these situations persist for years.

Establish who is able to agree to anything being dug, surveyed or altered on the site, and whether that is the same party.

Permission and responsibility sit in different places often enough that both have to be established separately.

Get a named person for each party rather than an organisation, record how to reach them, and note when that contact was last confirmed.

Correspondence addressed to an organisation circulates; correspondence addressed to a person gets answered.

Write a short list of every party involved and what each one is responsible for, and keep it with the site records.

Every new committee member and every professional asked to help starts by needing exactly this list.

Check whether any grant, funder or insurance arrangement attaches conditions about the condition of the site or what may be done to it.

Committees discover these conditions while applying for something else, by which time a decision has usually been taken.

What any grant, funding or insurance arrangement requires is a matter for the parties to it and their own advisers, and varies by site.

Ask previous committee members and long-standing users what they remember about the site's drainage, and write down who said what.

Attributed recollection is a lead; the same story unattributed is folklore that nobody can follow up.

Look through old files, minutes, grant applications and invoices, which frequently describe work on the site that nobody now remembers being done.

Grant paperwork in particular tends to describe a site in detail, because somebody once had to make a case.

Ask the landowner whether they hold any drawings, surveys or records for the site, and record the answer even where it is none.

A recorded none is worth having, because it stops the next committee spending a year looking.

Ask the local authority what records exist relating to the site, and note what you were told and by whom.

What is held locally varies, and the only way to find out is to ask and write down the answer.

Note anything physical on the site that suggests past work, such as covers, pipe ends, marker posts or a regular line in the grass.

Physical traces are the record that survives when the paper does not, and they are visible to volunteers.

Bring everything found into one file held by the committee rather than by an individual, and note where each item came from.

The file is what makes the next approach quicker, and it is the group's own asset.

Decide which party you approach first and why, and record that decision, rather than approaching everybody at once and waiting to see.

Simultaneous approaches let each party wait for the others, which is the position the group is already in.

Put the plan, the dated observations, the photographs and the loss record into one short document somebody can read in a sitting.

A readable document gets a response; a folder of attachments gets acknowledged and set aside.

Decide what you are actually asking for, whether that is an opinion, an investigation, a repair or simply a named responsible person.

Vague approaches produce sympathetic replies, and a committee cannot act on a sympathetic reply.

Ask the party what they would need from the group to take it further, and record the answer against your record.

Finding the gap early avoids losing another winter to something nobody thought to mention.

Ask a qualified drainage professional what could be established without opening any ground, and what would need the landowner's agreement.

Knowing what is available without permission shapes what the group can usefully do on its own.

Why a site holds water, and what would change it, is a determination for qualified professionals; nothing is investigated on land the group does not own without agreement.

Write down where the record is and what stage the approach reached, so the next committee does not begin again.

These situations outlast committees, and starting again each time membership turns over is why they persist.

Record it plainly when a party says they do not know or will not act, with the date, and ask what would change that.

A dated non-answer is the most useful thing a committee can hold, because it names exactly where the question stopped.