Facility Insurance Cover Conversation Preparation Checklist

Walk the whole site and list every structure on it, including the storage container, the shelter, spectator seating, the equipment store and anything left behind by a previous occupier.

Descriptions written at a desk leave out the things that arrived separately and were never added to any record of the facility.

Note which items are fixed in place and which are moved, folded away or taken off site outside the playing season, marking each one plainly.

Whether something is fixed or portable changes how it is described, and only somebody who has stood in front of it can say which it is.

Write down what any building, shelter or store appears to be made of in plain terms, and mark clearly where you are describing rather than stating something you know.

What a structure is built of and how it performs is for a suitably qualified professional to establish, not for an owner to state.

Note where the facility shares a wall, a roof, a fence or a boundary with another building or another owner, and record who owns each shared element.

Shared elements generate the most questions later and are easy to record accurately while you are standing beside them.

List what stays outside overnight, such as goals, nets, seating, bins and machinery, and note whether each item is secured to something or simply left standing.

Items left outside are described very differently from items locked away, and owners rarely think of them as part of the facility at all.

Write down everything added, altered or removed since the facility was handed over, noting roughly where in the season each change happened.

A description that has quietly stopped being accurate is worse than none, and later additions are usually what made it out of date.

List every category of user and note for each one whether they attend under a booking, a membership, an invitation or simply because the gate is open.

The basis on which somebody attends is the distinction a broker works from, and it is rarely written down anywhere on a community site.

Note whether anybody uses the facility who has no agreement with you at all, including informal use between and after booked sessions.

Informal use is the part owners leave out, and it is the first thing asked about once gates and fencing are mentioned.

Record which sessions have an organiser present and which are unattended, keeping this as a factual record of the arrangement rather than a judgement about it.

What supervision an activity calls for is confirmed with the relevant governing body and a suitably qualified professional, never decided here.

Note which organisation is responsible for any young people attending, and ask that organisation what arrangements and checks they hold in their own name.

Arrangements for young people are the responsibility of the organising body and the relevant authority; nothing here sets or assesses them.

Ask your insurer or broker what they expect you to record about arrangements a hirer holds in their own name, and note what each hirer tells you.

What a hirer holds is theirs to state and yours to record; what it means for you is a question for your own broker.

List the occasional uses that differ from ordinary sessions, such as open events, fundraising activities, filming or a group visiting once.

One-off uses are agreed verbally and then forgotten, and they are exactly the events people later wish they had mentioned.

Gather the handover pack, manuals and written instructions left by whoever built or supplied the facility, and note which items came with nothing at all.

The gaps in a handover pack are as useful to identify now as the contents, because they are what you will be asked for.

Note who carries out routine checks on the surface, the fencing, the equipment and the gates, and where the written record of those checks is kept.

Whether routine checks amount to an inspection, and what an inspection would involve, is for a suitably qualified professional and the relevant authority.

Keep a dated record of defects reported, what was done about each one and who did it, held with the facility papers rather than in messages on a phone.

A record that lives with the organisation survives a change of committee, which a thread on a personal phone does not.

Photograph the facility in its handed-over condition from fixed standing points, and keep those photographs with the date each one was taken.

A condition record made at opening becomes the reference everybody works from later, and it cannot be created retrospectively.

Note which pieces of equipment carry manufacturer instructions about use, checks or replacement, and record where those instructions are held.

What a manufacturer requires for a specific item is confirmed with that manufacturer or the supplier who provided it.

Write down which parts of the facility nobody has yet taken responsibility for, rather than leaving those gaps to be discovered when something goes wrong.

Unowned items are usually the boundary, the drainage and anything shared, and they are far easier to name now than to argue about later.

Describe how the site is secured when nobody is there, including which gates are locked, what is only latched and where the boundary is simply open.

Owners describe the intended arrangement rather than the real one, and the difference between them is what somebody else will ask about.

Note where equipment is stored out of hours and whether the store is fixed to anything or standing loose on the ground.

How a store is held down is a plain observable fact that owners almost never think to record about their own site.

List everybody holding a key or entry code, including former committee members, coaches and contractors, and note why each one has it.

Key holding grows quietly and nobody is ever removed from the list, so the list usually has to be rebuilt from scratch.

Note whether any camera, alarm or recording equipment is in use at the site, and who administers it.

Recording images or personal information at a site is a matter to put to the relevant authority and a suitably qualified adviser before anything is switched on.

Record what has already happened at the site, such as damage, entry or items going missing, with dates and a note of what was reported to whom.

A dated history is much easier to assemble while people still remember it than to reconstruct once somebody asks for it formally.

Note whether the site is overlooked by houses, a road or neighbouring premises, and from where anything happening on it could be seen after dark.

Whether a site is visible from anywhere at all shapes several of the questions that follow and is quick to establish on foot.

Note what adjoins the site on every side, including trees, watercourses, car parks, farmland and buildings in other ownership.

What is next door shapes a surprising amount of the conversation, and it is the sort of detail nobody thinks to write down.

Write down whether the ground has ever flooded, held water or moved, marking plainly which of that is recorded somewhere and which is local memory.

Any assessment of ground conditions, water or movement is for a suitably qualified professional, and nothing here establishes them.

Note how vehicles reach the site, where they park and whether they cross ground the facility does not control.

Parking and access frequently sit on land belonging to somebody else, which is worth establishing before anybody asks.

Note whether a public path, a right of way or a shared access crosses or borders the site.

What rights exist over land, and what they permit, is for a suitably qualified adviser to establish from the title documents.

List the trees and hedges close to the facility and note who owns and looks after each one.

Work to trees and hedges may be restricted and must be confirmed with the local authority and a qualified arboricultural professional.

Describe in plain terms how isolated the site is, including whether the nearest occupied building is within sight of it and whether anybody passes after dark.

Isolation is something an owner can describe honestly from experience, and it changes the shape of several later questions.

Gather the lease, licence or asset transfer agreement for the site and note every clause that mentions responsibility for the facility.

What a lease or site agreement requires is for a suitably qualified adviser to interpret rather than for an owner or committee to read.

Check any grant or funding agreement for conditions about how the facility must be kept and what must be held while it remains in use.

Conditions attached to a grant are stated by the body that made the award, and reading them as an owner is no substitute for asking that body.

Read your current hire agreement and booking terms and note what they already say about responsibility and about the arrangements a hirer holds.

Booking terms are usually inherited from another organisation and say things nobody in the group has read recently.

Note any affiliation to a governing body and what that body asks affiliated facilities to hold or to record.

Whatever a governing body asks of an affiliated facility is established by contacting that body, never inferred from another club.

Gather any warranty or defects paperwork from the build, and note what each document says about upkeep while it remains in force.

Warranty conditions often depend on upkeep being carried out and recorded, and they belong in the same folder as everything else here.

Note which organisation is named as owner or operator in each document, and whether that name is still the correct one.

Names in old paperwork lag behind reorganisations, and the mismatch is easier to fix before anybody relies on the document.

Put the description, the user list, the upkeep records and the photographs into one set, and give exactly the same set to everybody you speak to.

One consistent set of information keeps different answers comparable and stops the account of the site changing between conversations.

Ask your insurer or broker what they need to be told about the facility before it opens, and write the answer down rather than relying on memory.

What they need is theirs to state, and having it in writing protects the organisation when the committee changes.

Ask what they expect to be told when the facility changes, such as new equipment, a new user group or a change in the hours it is used.

Changes accumulate quietly after opening, and knowing in advance what has to be reported is what keeps the description accurate.

Agree who in your organisation is the named contact for this conversation, so that answers do not vary depending on who happens to be asked.

Inconsistent answers from different committee members cause more difficulty than any single fact about the facility.

Ask what records they expect to be kept about upkeep and defects, and where you would need to be able to produce them from.

What records are expected, and what they are used for, is a matter for your own insurer or broker to state.

Write a short list of the questions you cannot answer yourself, marking against each whether it belongs with your broker, a qualified professional or the local authority.

Sorting questions by who owns them stops an owner quietly deciding matters they have no standing to decide.