Table Tennis England scraps the supervision exemption: DBS checks become mandatory for everyone working with children

From 1 September 2026, a legal change in England forced hundreds of table tennis clubs to re-audit their entire volunteer lists. The Crime and Policing Act 2026 removed the "supervision exemption" from the legal definition of Regulated Activity. Coaches and volunteers who were previously considered exempt from background checks because another adult was always present are now treated exactly the same as those working alone with children.

Table Tennis England, the governing body for the sport in England, responded with an online webinar hosted by Kyhl Daly, the organisation's Designated Safeguarding Officer. The webinar takes place on Tuesday 29 September, from 6pm to 7pm local time. Registration is handled online through Table Tennis England's system.

Regulated Activity: the legal concept behind every form

Regulated Activity is a legal category in England describing work involving children or vulnerable adults at a level serious enough for the state to require a mandatory background check. When a role falls inside that definition, the person holding it must pass a check by the DBS, the Disclosure and Barring Service, and cannot start work before the result is returned.

That definition used to contain a gap. Before 1 September 2026, if a volunteer worked with children under someone else's supervision, they might not fall within Regulated Activity at all, meaning no DBS check was mandatory. The logic of the old rule was pragmatic: if someone already checked was always standing nearby, the risk was considered contained.

The Crime and Policing Act 2026 ends that logic. The supervision exemption has been removed entirely from the legal definition. There is no longer any distinction between supervised and unsupervised roles. A coach standing in front of six children at a summer camp and a coach giving private lessons behind a closed door now sit in the same category of responsibility. The core point is that the new regulation does not expand the types of work requiring checks; it expands the understanding of working conditions: the presence of a supervisor no longer counts as a substitute layer of protection.

The grey zone disappears from local clubs

For local table tennis clubs, this change lands squarely on the part of the job committees dislike most: paperwork. Volunteer lists at most clubs are built by word of mouth. One person recruits another, a former student's parent agrees to watch the hall, a young former player drops in to help coach at weekends. People like that used to sit in the grey zone of the old rule.

That grey zone is gone. If a person regularly works with anyone under 18 in a club setting — coaching, supervising, driving players to competitions, helping run junior events — they may fall within Regulated Activity and must hold an appropriate DBS check, regardless of who is supervising them.

Table Tennis England says the webinar will cover three areas. The first explains the regulatory change and how it affects individuals, including volunteers they work alongside. The second walks through Table Tennis England's own DBS processes. The third addresses the importance of DBS checks in safeguarding children in the sport.

The governing body also states that further detail can be found on its dedicated DBS page, where clubs can find concrete guidance rather than guesswork.

Who should attend the 29 September webinar

Table Tennis England defines the audience clearly. First, Club Welfare Officers, the people responsible for safeguarding at club level. Then members of club or league committees. And finally volunteers who regularly work with children.

The third group is the notable one. These people rarely identify themselves as subjects of a background check. They show up at a club to help, not to complete administrative forms. That Table Tennis England placed them on the invitation list suggests the organisation understands the biggest compliance gap lies not with people who refuse checks, but with people who do not know they need one.

The cost of delay

A webinar does not change the law. It changes the moment clubs realise they are operating outside it. That gap carries a price.

A DBS check is not a procedure finished in one morning. Results usually take several weeks, depending on the level of check and the complexity of an individual's record. During that waiting period, someone without a result cannot take on a role that falls under Regulated Activity. For a small club with only two coaches covering a junior session, losing one of them for three weeks means cancelling the session.

That is why the timing of an announcement matters almost as much as its content. A change already in force from 1 September 2026, with the explanatory webinar arriving on 29 September, leaves roughly a month in which many clubs operate in a state of uncertainty. Knowledge of a law only has value when it arrives before the deadline, not after it.

A counter-intuitive angle: when paperwork becomes a recruitment barrier

The most predictable reaction from an understaffed club is to cut volunteers rather than complete forms. The new rule is right in principle about safeguarding children, and almost nobody seriously disputes that goal. But it shifts administrative cost onto the smallest organisations, the ones with no dedicated staff and no budget for it.

The real risk is not a wave of violations. The risk is that some junior sessions close before any child comes to harm. This is a familiar paradox of every safety regulation: the people who comply most seriously often bear the highest cost, while groups operating outside the formal system — unaffiliated with any governing body — are never touched by the rule at all.

In other words, a law tightening background checks can accidentally undermine its own objective if it pushes children out of structured, supervised environments and into informal ones. I once believed a correct regulation always produces a correct outcome. Experience taught me that between the text and reality there is always a buffer zone, and that buffer zone is made of time, money and people.

What to watch after 29 September

After the webinar, the interesting question is not whether clubs understand the law. The question is how many clubs complete their volunteer audit before the next season begins, and how many people choose to step away from volunteering rather than fill in one more form.

The most valuable data will not appear in a press release. It will show up in the number of junior sessions reopened in October, and in the number of DBS applications Table Tennis England processes in the final quarter. If the first figure falls while the second rises, the regulation is doing its job. If both fall, the story is far more complicated than a single announcement.

Numbers can talk, but pain does not live in a spreadsheet. Every victory is a hypothesis that has not yet been falsified — including the victory of a regulation written with the best intentions.