Facility Winter Ground Conditions Decision Checklist

Name the person who decides whether ground is usable, and name a second person who decides when the first cannot be reached.

A decision belonging to a committee waits for a meeting, which is not how a frosty Saturday works.

Write down what that person is able to decide, including whether they can close part of the site rather than all of it.

Partial closure is the most useful decision available and is frequently not one anybody is authorised to take.

Agree by what time in the morning the decision is made, so users know when to expect it rather than waiting.

A decision without a deadline arrives after people have already set off.

Agree whether anybody can overturn the decision, and if so who, so the position is not reopened at the gate.

Decisions reopened on arrival are how a group ends up using ground it had decided against.

Note whether any other party is involved, including a landowner, a school, a governing body or a visiting club.

Where more than one party can call something off, the arrangement has to say what happens when they disagree.

Write the arrangement down before winter and give it to everybody it affects rather than explaining it each time.

Arrangements held in one person's head stop working the week that person is away.

Agree exactly what is looked at, including which areas, and ask the person deciding to record what they found each time.

Recording the observation rather than the conclusion is what makes the decision consistent across people.

Agree the positions from which the site is looked at, including the shaded areas that behave differently from the rest.

A site looked at from the car park is a different site from one walked, particularly in frost.

Note which parts of the site hold frost longest and which clear first, and mark those areas on a plan.

The pattern is stable year to year and turns a whole-site decision into an area-by-area one.

Ask each surface supplier how their surface behaves in frost and what conditions their guidance covers, recording each answer.

Different surfaces on one site behave differently on the same morning, and only the suppliers can say how.

Whether any surface is usable in particular conditions is a matter for its supplier and for qualified professionals rather than for a site judgement.

Agree that the person deciding records the conditions and applies the written arrangement, rather than judging for themselves whether anything is safe.

Asking a volunteer to make a safety judgement puts them in a position nobody should be asked to hold.

Nothing here determines whether ground or a surface is safe; that is not an owner-side or volunteer judgement.

Note that conditions overnight and the forecast matter as much as the morning, and agree whether an earlier call can be made.

An early call the night before saves more travel than a perfect one at eight in the morning.

Note what freezing conditions do to the drainage, including water standing where it usually clears, and record it rather than clearing anything.

Frozen ground changes where water goes, and the observation is worth keeping because it is the one nobody thinks to make.

What standing or frozen water in a drainage feature means is a matter for a qualified drainage professional rather than something to act on at the time.

Agree one place where the decision is always posted, and make sure every user group knows where that is.

Information scattered across several channels means everybody checks a different one.

Name who posts the decision and who does it when that person cannot, since the decision and the posting are different jobs.

Decisions regularly get made and then sit with the person who made them.

Agree how visiting groups and anybody travelling a distance are told directly, rather than being expected to check somewhere themselves.

The people travelling furthest are the ones least likely to be on any local channel.

Agree what is posted when no decision has been made yet, so silence is not read as the site being open.

Silence is interpreted generously by everybody who wants to play.

Agree what happens if conditions change during the day and whether a decision can be reversed, and who tells people.

Reversal is where the arrangement usually breaks, because nobody has agreed a route for the second message.

Agree what happens when somebody arrives anyway, including what is displayed at the entrance and who is expected to speak to them.

Somebody always arrives, and a sign is a better answer than an argument.

List the routes people actually use, including from parking, to entrances, to any area in use and to anything reached in the dark.

The routes people use and the routes on a plan are frequently not the same, particularly in winter.

Decide which of those are treated and which are not, and record that decision rather than leaving it to the morning.

An unrecorded decision becomes whatever the person on site had time and material for.

Decide which routes are closed off rather than treated, and how they are closed so that it is obvious to anybody arriving.

Closing a route is frequently the better answer and is rarely considered as an option.

Name who carries out any treatment and at what time, and agree what happens when that person is not available.

Treatment that depends on one person is unavailable on exactly the mornings it matters.

Note what equipment and material is needed, where it is stored, and who has access to that store out of hours.

Material locked in a store nobody can open at seven in the morning is material the site does not have.

Note which routes are used in the dark and whether that changes what is treated or whether use happens at all.

Winter use is largely in darkness, and the treatment plan is usually made in daylight.

Ask every surface supplier what may and may not be spread on their surface, and get the answer in writing.

The answer is specific to the installation and is not obtainable from general guidance.

What may be applied to a surface is established by its supplier and installer for that installation; nothing here recommends any material or method.

Ask what happens to whatever is spread when it melts, where it goes, and whether that affects planting or drainage nearby.

Material spread on a path ends up in whatever the path drains to, which is rarely considered.

Ask whoever supplied or designed the planting beside these routes what run-off from any winter treatment would mean for it.

Planting beside a treated route takes everything spread on that route, season after season.

What any treatment means for planting or a drainage feature is a matter for the people who supplied or designed them.

Ask what may be used to clear a surface mechanically, including whether any blade, shovel or machine is ruled out on it.

Clearing damage is done with ordinary tools by people doing exactly what was asked of them.

Write the restrictions down and keep that note wherever the winter materials are stored, rather than in a file somewhere else.

Restrictions filed in an inbox never reach the person holding the bucket at seven in the morning.

Record which material is permitted on which surface, since a site of this kind usually has several surfaces with different answers.

A single bag used everywhere is the normal outcome of not writing this down.

Keep a dated log of each decision taken, what conditions were observed and what was decided, however brief each entry is.

The log turns a series of judgements into a pattern somebody can plan around.

Record which routes were treated on each occasion and with what material, keeping that alongside the decision itself in the same log.

Consumption, effort and coverage are all invisible without this, and all three are needed for next year.

Note anything that did not work, including a message that did not reach people or a store nobody could open.

These small failures repeat every winter until somebody writes one of them down.

Add to the plan which areas held frost longest each time, so the pattern builds up over a season.

After one winter the plan answers most of the morning's question before anybody walks the site.

Go through the log before the following winter with everybody involved, and change the arrangement where it did not hold.

The review has to happen before the cold weather, which means putting it in the diary in autumn.

Keep the arrangement and the log with the facility rather than with the person who ran it, and show it to whoever comes next.

Committees and staff change, and the next person otherwise starts from the first cold morning.

Agree what is recorded and who is told if somebody slips, a vehicle cannot leave, or the site is found in worse condition than expected.

These are the occasions the whole arrangement exists for, and a dated note of what happened is what changes it for next winter.