Scout SuiteHow-to guide
Writing a risk assessment
A risk assessment in Scout Suite is the one you write for an activity, a building, or a piece of kit — not the group's top-level risk register. Here's how it goes from a draft to something you can take on the day.
Start from Risk Assessments
Open Risk Assessments in the left-hand nav, then New Assessment. Give it a name, say what's being assessed (an activity or event, a building, a piece of equipment, or something else), describe it, and set the assessment date. You can pick a Linked Event now or later, and an optional next review date.
Use a template, or start from scratch
Template (optional) copies that template's hazards onto the new assessment — None - Start from scratch if you'd rather build it yourself. Under Templates you can view group, shared and global templates and Use This Template. Group-owned templates can be edited; ones shared from elsewhere are there to reuse.
Add the hazards and controls
Add Hazard for each one: what it is, who might be harmed, how, likelihood and severity, existing controls, any extra controls, and who owns them. You can add these before you've even created the assessment — they're staged and saved together the moment you hit Create Assessment.
Submit for review, then approve
From the list, open the assessment. Submit for Review moves it from draft to pending review. Someone with permission to manage safety then Approve or Reject. There's no separate approver role and no extra notes box on those buttons — it's a deliberate sign-off, the same person who wrote it can approve it.
DraftPending reviewApprovedRejectedTake it on the day — PDF, and on the event
Download PDF from the assessment. You can also attach it from the event itself (the event form has a Risk Assessment field), so the camp or trip and the assessment point at each other.
That's the activity-level assessment. Incidents, its own item in the left-hand nav, is the register after something has happened — see Recording an incident. Risk Register is organisational risks (finance, safeguarding, reputation) — a different tool, modelled on the Scouts' own register.
Camps and trips that need this paperwork are walked through in Running an event.
Safety & HQ
More in this topic
Risk, incidents, GDPR, the building, and the kit in it.