Ringing Forums

the response to a tower asking "Have you got a clean DBS certificate?" would not necessarily be straight forward. — Phillip George

Indeed, and the rest of your explanation is excellent as well.

For those who haven't had to go through the process there are four levels of checking:

• Basic - unspent convictions and cautions.
• Standard - spent and unspent convictions and adult cautions.
• Enhanced - spent and unspent convictions and adult cautions, plus a check on any information held by police forces.
• Enhanced with barred list - spent and unspent convictions and adult cautions, a check on any information held by police forces, plus a check against the children's and/or adults barred lists.

So a DBS Enhanced Certificate, which is what the CofE requires for people who work with vulnerable children or adults, contains:

• The applicant's personal details.
• The requesting organisations details.
• Police records of convictions, cautions, reprimands and warnings, after the statutory filtering has been applied.
• Information from the list held under Section 142 of the Education Act 2002.
• DBS Children's barred list information.
• DBS Adult's barred list information.
• Other relevant information disclosed at the Chief Police Officer(s) discretion.

Note that it is not a requirement for rank & file ringers to undergo Enhanced DBS checks, requiring people to undergo DBS checking unnecessarily is an offence.

The CofE SG guidance related to ringing says that:

Bell ringers who teach or train children plus the Tower Captains who manage those adults who teach or train

must have an Enhanced with children's barred list check, unless they are supervised or do not fulfil the frequency criteria, where they are:

once a week or more; 4 days or more in any 30-day period or overnight between the hours of 2am and 6am.

For rank and file ringers, the guidance says they are eligible for a Basic DBS check, but it is not mandatory - but there's a cost involved to the CofE, so I think in practice that will be a "no".

And as Phillip says, if a DBS certificate isn't squeaky clean it doesn't necessarily mean the person has to be excluded from an activity, it all depends on the activity, what's on the certificate, the judgment of the organisation requiring the check and what, if any, protections can be put in place.

No, you can't.

voluntary donation — Peter Sotheran

Call it what you like, the expectation is that people pay, and if they didn't it's pretty certain they would be refused permission to ring there again. A competent lawyer would have little difficulty persuading people it was a hiring event.

pay a proper amount of money — Simon Linford

That's pretty meaningless - churches quite often allow groups that they want to support to pay an amount that's well below the market rate for using the church.

carry public liability insurance (because we would not longer be covered by the church) — Simon Linford

In most cases you already aren't covered if you are visiting a church as an outside group. The church insurance most likely covers the church from claims by visitors, but does not cover the outside group:

Public liability insurance

The public liability (third party) insurance under our Parishguard policy provides an indemnity to the PCC as property owners if held legally liable for accidental bodily injury to members of the public, or accidental damage to their property while the premises are being hired.

This insurance, however, doesn’t extend to indemnify any outside groups hiring the premises.

With the previous comments in mind, the PCC should obtain written confirmation from any hirers that they have public liability cover for their activities while the church premises are being hired.

https://www.ecclesiastical.com/risk-management/hiring-out-premises/

As I understand it, that's the reason many ringing societies provide indemnity insurance for their members:

https://derbyda.org.uk/insurance/

I think we need to be careful what we wish for — Simon Linford

I'm not wishing for anything, I simply think it's unwise to just assume that a group of visiting ringers are going to be covered by the hosting church's insurance. Because if an insurance payout is ever needed, it's too late to find out.

• Visiting ringers have to book the church and pay steepleage. That's no different to any other hiring transaction, good luck persuading any lawyer differently.
• The last visitors we had were from the other end of the country, not even from our diocese, they were ringing solely for pleasure so in no way could they be considered "volunteers supporting a church activity".
• Yes, the church authorities have set the SG rules, in the form of the nationally-agreed Parish SG handbook. The SG requirements for hiring are in there, the ones I quoted. Yes, of course confirm with your incumbent as well, but the guidance seems clear and not unreasonable and I see no reason why ringing visits would deviate from it.
• Parishes deviating from the Parish SG handbook would need to have a justification for doing so. Requirements for all visiting ringers to have SG certs when there are no vulnerable visitors are contrary to the handbook, and probably impossible to achieve anyway as (as far as I know) CofE SG certification is not transferable.
• Paying ringers is an entirely different issue not related to SG, but I note that Organists manage to get paid, so there's clearly a well-trodden process.

I'd assume it's the same as for any other organisation that wants to hire church premises, as in effect that's what it is:

Hire out church premises
Ensure an addendum to a hire agreement is always used when any person/body hires church premises (i.e. a church building or a church hall) for activity that involves children, young people or vulnerable adults, for example a pre-school, youth group or mental health support group.

https://www.churchofengland.org/sites/default/files/2019-10/ParishSafeGuardingHandBookAugust2019Web.pdf

Note that specifically says "for activity that involves children, young people or vulnerable adults", it does not say "for all activity", despite what some of the more jobsworth churches have been reported to be requiring from visiting ringers.

And said addendum: https://www.churchofengland.org/sites/default/files/2017-11/Roles%20and%20Responsibilities%20-%20Appendix%206.docx

Pretty much done to death already on this discussion: https://www.ringingforums.org/discussion/136/safeguarding-on-ringing-outings-etc/p1

when we were ringing CCs with just 4 ringers due to COVID I must admit it did sound better. But personally I find them helpful when ringing methods.

The argument is simple - many "average" bands, like my home tower, don't have the ability do one style of leading for CCs and a different one for Methods. That's from experience - it's closed for everything and it drives me nuts...

The forum software is a hosted, commercial product called PlushForums as far as I can tell, if you have complaints I suggest you direct them to the developer, I don't think there's much to be achieved by griping on here.

And personally I don't have a problem with the pagination.

you are entirely safe from the world of meringue couture then :rofl:

I wish I had the courage to say "No Fee No Ring" — Julia Lysaght

If you don't want to confront it head on, I'd just become permanently unavailable on wedding days, because I needed to iron the cat or somesuch. Nobody else has a right to demand your time.

Each PCC must implement an SG policy which includes the overall key elements of the national policy. But, each PCC has license to include in its policy clauses which relate to activities which are relevant (and approved) in their parishes, e.g. bell ringing So there is flexibility. — Phillip George

Umm, that's not true in my diocese - at the PCC level there's no flexibility with regard to deciding what training is needed for ringing, they just have to implement what they are told by the diocese. The only relevant optional training is safer recruitment for TCs, if they are involved in the recruitment of paid staff - which I suspect is almost never going to be the case.

I agree with your point that it's not the type of training that's the issue, I should have been more exact. It's the management of it and the apparently limited applicability of the resulting certification that's the issue. Because of geography I ring regularly in four different dioceses - am I supposed to do safeguarding training for each?

I understand what you are saying but the PCC have no say in setting safeguarding policy, it's decided at diocesan level - even though the diocese then make it the responsibility of the PCCs to implement it.

The assumption around volunteer SG training is that people only volunteer in one church, so everything is done at that level. That's increasingly untrue for many volunteers, and never has been true for ringers. It's another manifestation of just how out of touch diocesan/national CofE management has become with its parishes that it's come up with a SG policy that's not fit for purpose - but, CofE so no surprise there.

I agree that in an ideal world there should be national, transferable SG training for all CofE volunteers, but there isn't, despite the obvious need for it and I can't see it happening as they've specifically not done that in the first place. Or we get "special case" training for ringing which allows us to continue to operate in the way we have for aeons.

I don't think ringers want to be "different" when it comes to SG, but we need something that works for us, which the current setup doesn't.

completely sensible things that I've seen suggested before, but it's good to know they work in practice :smile:

Things that stood out in particular from the above are the initial intensive handling sessions, the importance of place and the concentration on good handling and listening early on and not pushing people on before they have those skills.

Based on experience from my first two learners I've decided it's better for me to take on one learner at a time and give them 1:1 sessions rather than have 2-3 people spending more than half the time sitting about.

Although my current learner is only just beginning to ring unassisted we've already spent a lot of time on the importance of position on the rope to control the bell. My own experience was that after I'd got to the stage where I was unlikely to kill myself, I was more or left to get on with it, where "it" was call changes, where you can fluff your way through even with poor bell control. Then learning PH took an absolute age because I hadn't really learned how to make sustained changes in speed, and trying to move on to PB5 nearly finished me as a ringer because it required even better bell control, plus ringing by place, ropesight etc - skills which I simply didn't have. I've seen exactly the same problems as I had with both other learners and long-established ringers. If we want to train people as change ringers then I think we need to be training for that from the very start.

Round here we have re-activated a silent tower in a large village over the last nine months. They now have a band of twelve ringers aged 12 - 65, the more advanced of whom are just starting to plain hunt. — Roger Booth

I'd be interested to hear how that was achieved - what worked, what didn't, what sort of existing ringers you need to support the process etc. I think the "Bootstrapping problem" is going to become more and more common.

I'll also be interested to hear about what happens beyond the PH stage. My home band has been stuck at that point for the last 40 years and when we've asked for advice it's almost always been "Plain Bob Doubles", which in my experience is usually a disaster for bands that can't already ring it.

sounds similar to here - 35 towers in the branch, mostly small towns & rural and over an hour to the towers most distant to us. We are on the boundary of 4 associations (Derby, Yorks, Chester & Lancs) so the majority of the towers nearest to us are not in our association, so if we were going to form a cluster, it would make no sense for it to be based on our association. But the situation in most of the surrounding towers in other associations is even worse than ours.

Perhaps we are reaching a point in some areas then where local bands have collapsed to a point where not even viable clusters can be formed in which case the branch or district becomes the first level building block of formal organisation. — A J Barnfield

If local bands have collapsed to that point then I suspect the branch/district will have as well.

The current formal organisations were fine in the long since gone halcyon days, and they tend to be run by people who learnt during those days. Where I ring they don't reflect where we are now and attempts to "improve" things seem to be to just to try to do more of the stuff that worked in those days - exactly as Roger said: "Practices focussed on methods up to Cambridge Minor and the Standard eight, striking competitions against 'expert bands' and quarterly meetings over half an hour's drive away"

As an ART Tutor I have also delivered a number of ART Module 1 courses (how to teach bell handling) since Covid. It is noticeable that most of those attending are keen to learn to teach, or are inexperienced teachers who are keen to improve their skills, but this is not matched by the number of experienced teachers who are willing to support and mentor these delegates in the period after the day course. This is essential to help the delegates gain experience and complete their logbooks. — Roger Booth

That matches my experience. I organised an Art Module 1 course in our tower before COVID and subsequently was teaching two people when the pandemic brought everything to a halt. For various reasons they've not restarted but I do have a new learner who is making good progress. I'm time-limited as I'm working so I can't take on more than 1-2 at a time and give them the 1:1 time they need at the start, even if we desperately need more ringers in the area.

There is an ART teacher I could reach out to if I needed help, however I was one of her pupils when she was being accredited and helped her with her subsequent pupils, so I was aware of much of ART teaching practice before I went on the Module 1 course. As for ART teacher logbooks and accreditation, I suspect that's more important to ART than it is to me and frankly I don't think I'll bother - the hassle my teacher had to get accredited has put me off, and she is much more connected to the ringing community than I am. If there was an assessment day then I'd consider going on that. The ART teaching scheme is really good for the handling stages, it gave me the techniques and confidence I needed to teach handling quickly and safely and I certainly won't be going "off piste", but I think it's unlikely I'll ever be an official ART teacher.

Practices focussed on methods up to Cambridge Minor and the Standard eight, striking competitions against 'expert bands' and quarterly meetings over half an hour's drive away are of little interest to this band. We have just started holding regular 'Improvers' practices (call changes, kaleidoscope and plain hunt) focussed on this group and others in our local Deanery, and they have proved very popular. By being regular, local and sociable, they will make faster progress than the usual annual training day. — Roger Booth

Again, exactly the situation here. Two band members have just become association members but that was hard to arrange and required a drive over the Pennines to one of the occasional branch practices, I think it's marginal as to whether they'll go to any future ones. The same two people have also been going to the monthly Plain Methods sessions at the diocesan ringing centre although that's on the limits of being practical - it's a 2 hour session with a 1-hour drive each way. The rest of the band aren't really interested.

It's adapting to retain the interest of keen new ringers like this that the exercise desperately needs, rather than things returning to the old 'normal'. — Roger Booth

A big yes. And it's not just new ringers either, since resuming and a change of TC my home band people who have been ringing for many years have a renewed interest, there's a band BBQ at the church next month and there's been talk of arranging a tower outing. And for the first time in probably 40 years, the tower band rang something other than CC's & PH at a service yesterday. Yes it was only an easy Minimus method + 2 covers, but the positive effects of getting to that point have been huge.

wow and glad to hear it - thank you. Let's sincerely hope you are successful!

all very good points. Do you think there should be national SG training specifically for ringers, transferrable between a towers? Would that be led by the CofE or the CCCBR? I think there's a strong case that the CofE has done a poor job as far as SG in a ringing context goes.

I'm also unconvinced that SG training should be mandated for all ringers. It isn't for all others in the CofE although it is recommended. That seems about right.