Ringing Forums

Both of the scenarios that you paint are somewhat extreme, but are the sort of thing that lead societies take out some form of insurance. However, as we have seen above although members in all four Guilds and Associations above are “insured” in practice whether they are covered, or not, will depend on what the incident is and which policy is in place. And, even if it is covered, the amount that can be claimed will vary significantly. Also, it may already be covered by another policy (e.g. the PCC's) and it is fraudulent to claim against more than one policy for the same incident.

There are many different insurance products available in the marketplace, but many ringers do not appreciate the differences. There is some excellent advice on the SMWG website, but it is not easy to find. https://cccbr.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Insurance-v3.pdf . However, as I explained in my earlier posting, you really need to start with an understanding of property law and the potential hazards, and then undertake a risk assessment.

You need to consider who has a ‘duty of care’ and who has been negligent – Donahue V Stevenson (the snail in the Ginger Beer case). In your example of the learner, would it be reasonable to expect you as a visitor to have such a wide duty of care? wasn’t the tower captain who asked you to supervise a learner negligent?; or was it the person who taught the learner to ring in the first place?; or the PCC in not having a competent tower captain or teacher? Whilst the learner could try and sue you, they would stand more success suing the PCC, who have a duty of care towards their ringers and should be insured to cover this risk. The PCC should also protect you as a visitor, who has permission to be there.

Similarly, if the gudgeon breaks rather than the stay, this tends to indicate a problem with the gudgeon itself. Has it been machined correctly (bell-hangers duty of care) or has the steeple-keeper fitted an over-sized replacement stay? What system is in place to ensure that the steeple-keeper has been trained properly?

As the SMWG advice explains, the situations that you suggest are extremely rare and who is responsible can be extremely complicated. In both cases the PCC (or building owner in the case of a secular building) have duties of care. Normally they will have Employers Liability Insurance to cover their own ringers, and Public Liability Insurance to cover damage by visitors, who have permission to be there. Sometimes, depending on what insurance is in place, your Guild or Association Insurance may cover these incidents as well. Therefore, if you are not personally insured, why would someone bother to sue you, unless you have been reckless, ignored those in charge, and rung without permission.

I think the vast majority of ringers totally misunderstand insurance for ringing and ringers, and many Guilds and Associations spend significant sums of money unnecessarily. Marcus Booth of Ecclesiastical gave an excellent presentation at the ART Conference a few years ago, and a recording is available on ART’s YouTube channel. The presentation was repeated at the CCCBR Roadshow at Goldsmiths.

I am not an insurer, but my experience comes from the other side of the fence. Rather than start by arranging a policy I think it is important for ringers to start by considering the risks and undertaking a risk assessment.

Typical situations could be:

1. Jane a member of the Sunday band at Little Snoring slips down the worn tower steps after Sunday morning ringing. There is no handrail or rope to hold on to, so she falls a long way and breaks several bones. The worn steps have previously been reported to the PCC, but no action has been taken.

2. John the steeplekeeper at Little Snoring needs to check the ropes in his tower for wear. He goes up alone and without a mobile phone and slips off the frame and seriously injures himself. It is many hours before he is found and as a consequence of the delay and his injuries he has to take significant time off work.

3. There is a tall vertical wooden ladder up the bells at Little Snoring, without any hoops or a fall arrest system. The top of the ladder is over 16 feet high above a stone floor and a ringer falls off while attempting to lift the heavy trap door at the top, and is seriously injured. There is no risk assessment in place for use of the ladder, or any routine inspection of it.

4. Peter, a member of the local band at Little Snoring, is electrocuted and dies when switching off a faulty fan heater after practice. No PAT testing regime is in place.

5. John the steeplekeeper is concerned that pigeons have got in to the tower. After replacing the wire netting he removes the pigeon droppings and disposes them. A few days later he becomes seriously ill. No guidance or PPE has been provided by the PCC.

6. James, another member of the local band rings up the tenor on practice night. Unbeknown to the ringers the Vicar (or churchwarden) has let telecomms engineers up the tower. They climbed up the ladder past the tenor and dislodged the slider as they hoisted up their equipment. As they were not ringers they did not know to replace it. No one checked after their visit. James is relatively tall and it is a heavy bell and he had not let the last coil out, when the bell was up. As a consequence when he tried to set the bell, James was lifted several feet into the air and fell awkwardly, breaking several bones, as well as receiving rope burns.

None of these are Guild or Association events. The point I am making is that the PCC have duties under the Health & Safety at Work Act which include the provision of:
a. a safe system of work;
b. a safe place of work.
In addition, the PCC have duties under other legislation and common law.

Therefore, they usually have Employers Liability Insurance, typically with £5 or £10 million cover. As Marcus explained in his presentation, although ‘volunteers’ members of the local band will be treated as ‘employees’ and covered by the PCC’s insurance. In addition, the PCC will also have Public Liability Insurance, which will cover visiting ringers, and other people who could be expected to visit the church (e.g. guests at a wedding).

Therefore Guilds and Association with their own cover might be able to claim against this, but there is usually a clause saying that they will only be covered if there is no other insurance in place. If any of these incidents happened the insurers would then make a claim against the PCC.

Therefore in effect Guild and Association Insurance only covers incidents at Guild and Association events, and for which the Guild and Association is responsible – e.g. despite being warned not to do so, someone lets off the clock-hammers whilst the bells are still swinging and this smashes some wheels and cracks a bell.

Some Guilds and Associations also have personal accident insurance, but this is very expensive and the benefits are very low. £20,000 for a death would not cover the mortgage payments for a young person who is the main breadwinner for a family. As people’s personal financial circumstance vary significantly it is better that they have their own personal accident cover (and many do already).

The Sufffolk Guild paid £390.36 for Members Accident Insurance (up to £5k) and £347.03 for Public Liability Insurance and £103.60 for Property Damage insurance in 2021 InsuranceSummary20201006.pdf (<a href="http://suffolkbells.org.uk" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">suffolkbells.org.uk</a>)

The MCA&LDG Paid £1,045 for Personal Accident Insurance (up to (£20k) in 2021. It does not hold Public Liability Insurance Insurance (bellringing.london)

The Surrey Association paid £533.99 for £1m of Public Liability Insurance in 2021 but holds no Personal Accident Insurance Insurance - The Surrey Association of church bell ringers (surreybellringers.org.uk)

The Gloucester & Bristol DA paid £489 in 2021 so that the Association - and its paid up members as individuals - are insured for £2,000,000 against third party claims for being negligent whilst acting as G&B members. Members are NOT insured against personal injury at all… …they would need to check this with their own PCC. Association Information (bellsgandb.org.uk)

This information is all available with a simple Google search. It demonstrates that there are vast differences between what societies pay and what is covered.

Completing this exercise and comparing all societies would be a very useful exercise and help societies improve value for money for their members.

We could have the coaches. The total number of course delegates who have attended ART Teacher Training Modules since the 2012 is 4,050 as at the end of 2020. Demand for these modules is as high as ever, with ART on track to deliver a further 50 Modules in 2020 with an average attendance of ten delegates per Module.

Having delivered a number of these Modules as an ART Tutor, it has been interesting to observe what happens afterwards. Delegates are keen to learn teach or improve their teaching skills, but often the experienced teachers who could mentor them and help them to gain practical teaching experience do not do this. There seems to be passive aggressive resistance at all levels. Society education & training committees and PR officers who deal with web enquiries, seem to prefer to place new recruits with an existing 'known' teacher, rather than a trainee teacher. I know of examples where a recruit has been sent to a tower some distance away to learn, despite the fact that there is a potentially very good new teacher nearby. There is no a joined up strategy.

Also, there are examples of where Old Fred who has been teaching 'his' way for many years is not happy that young Jenny, who has been on an ART Module and understands that teaching needs to be flexible and suit the pupils style of learning, is open to different ways of doing things, so Jenny never gets the opportunity to teach.

When ART was established ten years ago, there was a lot of criticism from certain quarters that it would lead to many experienced teachers giving up teaching. However, if they have it is probably due to old age. What the exercise needs to do at all levels now is to adopt a much more supportive attitude to the 4,000 who have come on a teacher training Module in the last ten years, and the 500 odd who will attend this year. It's almost one per tower and if properly supported and brought on these people could help safeguard the future health of the exercise.

Over the next decade, I suspect that as so many of us are in the over 60 bulge, that either the 30% will increase, or that as a significant number will no longer be with us, unless they are replaced at the same rate, total membership will steadily go down.

I am sure that everyone will want to collect the basic data anyway, the point that I was making was that it was all the other stuff in the 1988 survey which is very interesting and will provoke debate on how things have changed and what we need to do going forward.

However I think we do need to be careful to define what is meant by an 'active' ringer. We may have 30,000 or possibly even 40,000 'ringers', but how often do they ring? From my experience I suspect that there are quite a few 'ringers' listed in annual reports, who have their membership paid for them, even though that have been living in a care home for a year or more. At the other extreme is someone who has had a few handling lessons, or someone who hasn't come for a couple of months, to be counted in the overall total?

I like Graham John's suggestion. Some form of CCCBR template for societies to use would enable them to conduct (and update) local surveys of the state of ringing in their area, and perhaps put an action plan together. There would also be consistency between the data. Is this something that Paul Wotton and the V&L Group could organise?

I think we have a reasonable consensus on the the number of ringers, the demographic profile, what methods are rung at practices and on Sunday, the numbers of silent towers and struggling bands, and where this is all leading us. However the 1988 survey (http://bellringing.co.uk/1988%20survey.pdf) included a whole lot more information which if updated would help Guilds and Associations and Districts and Branches and the CCCBR to do something to address the trends.

• The relationship between ringers and the church (today Evangelical churches are in the ascendancy and we need to understand the impact of this)
• Teaching the art - tower captains
• Recruitment and retention rates
• Publications (today things are much different and we are heading for everything to be on line)
• Ringing courses - preferred topics
• Effectiveness of Guilds and Associations
• Grass roots - how Districts and Branches are regarded by their members
• Care of bells (besides restoration, ought to include how welcoming the ringing environment is)
• Regional variations
• Effect of settlement size
• Sociological profile (today would include BME participation and inclusivity data and relate this to the local community)
• Itinerant bands (today would include clusters, hubs etc)
• The Ringing World (today would include various forms of communication)

We need to be clear that we are not undertaking a census. A 10% sample, as in 1988, or less would be adequate, provided that participants were chosen at random. There are statistical techniques for verifying randomness.

Also one large survey form as in 1988 would take too long for participants to complete. A suite of more focused on-line surveys would be better, and this would enable them to be developed and issued over time, rather than have to wait.

I think the problem is that the gap between the top and bottom ends of ringing has widened significantly during my 50 year ringing career. There is now a 'squeezed middle' which makes it difficult for many to progress up the ladder or pyramid beyond LtR3, unless you happen to be lucky enough to ring at one of those towers with a competent band.

The fragmented communication structure of the exercise and a number of individuals who hold positions of influence and resist change (and who have been in post a long time), also makes it difficult to address current issues and move forward. We need more new leaders but with the squeezed middle there are few candidates willing to come forward.

There was a comprehensive survey of the state of ringing in 1988 which if replicated today would help move the debate forward. Although some work was also undertaken in the early 2000's which helps identify what towers ring on practice night (if they hold one) and confirms that a large number of bands do not ring much more than PB and Grandsire, it's a shame that a more comprehensive survey has not been undertaken, especially as modern technology makes this far easier than 1988.


2004 Survey


1988 Survey extract

Although Gordon Lucas published his book in 2004, dodging and place making exercises are included in the 'One per Learner' books first published by the late Pam Copson in 1982. Kaleidoscope is just a development of this. There are also a number of other bell control exercises common to the OPL 'Bell Club Awards' and ART's 'Learning the Ropes' scheme.

You need to be very careful in quoting dB as it is a logarithmic scale and you can't simply add the figures of two sounds together. To be useful you also need to give the distance from the source. There are also different weighted scales to consider as the sound of bells is not constant - the bell is at its loudest when it strikes. For construction site noise Town Planners consider a time weighted scale over a period of hours.

However most noise complaints about bells are made to the Environmental Health Officer and considered under the law of nuisance, and that depends on what is 'reasonable'. I was once involved in a case where neighbours in a block of flats were making a lot of noise. One neighbour was elderly and as they were hard of hearing it didn't affect them. However it seriously affected the neighbour who worked shifts and wanted to sleep!

I'm not even sure that the inspecting Architect or Surveyor would spot many of the issues that an experienced steeple-keeper would spot. The problem is that many ringers are now quite old, and there are less people with the energy and skills to go out and look after these towers. Some Guilds and Associations are contributing towards periodic maintenance inspections by a professional bell-hanger. Several of these can be undertaken in the same area in the same day, making this relatively inexpensive. However, as with the other issues, it comes down to the ringing community needing to make a reasonable financial contribution in future.

The problems for ringing are far more than just the risk of closure of say 350 churches. In far more cases, even if a church is kept open, the frequency of services may be reduced to once or twice a month, as parishes are combined into larger benefices sharing a priest. Within a 5 mile radius of where I now live in Hampshire there are two rings of six and a ring of five in small villages where there is just one main monthly service and perhaps an 8am communion or weekday service once or twice a month as well. Realistically there is no prospect of establishing a local band. Encouraging ringers from other towers in the benefice to ring in these towers is not easy as even they are now struggling with reduced numbers after the pandemic.

We also have a cultural problem about where we should direct our resources in future. Is it hardware, or people. Two of the three towers are major restorations and augmentations which have taken place in the past two decades.

A third issue comes from my experience in London in the 1980's and 1990's where significant money was invested in making church buildings suitable for community use. We then found that the community spaces were hired out to various groups most days. We couldn't hold a practice on Monday evenings because of the community choir were rehearsing below Tuesdays the parish room next to the tower was being used by Al Anon., etc., etc. As ringers we are used to a cheap hobby as it was traditionally seen as a service to the church. Even if an active church or a CCT one becomes a teaching centre, we are going to have to make a larger financial contribution than we have done in the past

I like the idea of an international festival of bells, but why are we as change-ringers so inward looking and just talking about things like Stedman's birthday or the anniversary of the CCCBR. We're missing out on a huge amount of potential and PR here. There's already a festival of bells on New Year's Day in the US which covers all forms of ringing, and this would be the ideal date to choose - https://www.bells.org/events

Why are we change-ringers so inward looking when it comes to PR. There is already a festival of bells in the US which embraces all forms of ringing (including carillons and tune ringing on handbells) and this is on New Year's day. This would have far greater public appeal than Stedman's Birthday or anniversary of the CCCBR - https://www.bells.org/events.

By being so inward looking we as change ringers are missing out on many valuable PR opportunities.

For example, our local band have loaned a set of handbells to the local Girlguides, who are using them to rehearse tunes and perform at a local carol service. The Guide leaders are very enthusiastic and thrilled that we have made this happen. Many towers have similar sets of handbells which they could use in a similar way. It is wonderful way of engaging and networking with the local community, especially young people, some of whom could then become change-ringers. Explaining to change-ringers where to get the music from, how to use the handbells, and the support available from HRGB would make a great topic for a PR day. It would make a welcome change to the usual negative complaint that Scouts and Guides only come along for the badge, and then give up.