Accident and Incident Reports

Scoutworks includes a dedicated accident and incident reporting system so your group can record injuries, illnesses, near misses, and property damage in one place. Reports follow a clear workflow from creation through to review and closure, serious incidents include a helper for submitting the required report to Scout HQ, and every report has a place to write down what your group will change as a result.

Opening Accident Reports

Navigate to Events > Accident Reports via the sidebar, or click Report Incident from the dashboard Actions dropdown. The breadcrumb trail reads Home > Events > Accident Reports. Only leaders and group admins can access this page.

Safety Overview

Four statistics cards appear at the top of the page in a collapsible Safety Overview section. All figures cover the last 90 days.

Card	What it shows
Pending HQ Reports	Serious incidents that still need to be reported to Scout HQ
Awaiting Review	Submitted reports that still need reviewing and signing off
Last 90 Days	Total incidents reported, broken down by serious and minor
Near Misses	Near-miss reports in the same period -- a healthy reporting culture includes these

Creating a Report

Click the green Report Incident button. Scoutworks takes you through six short steps.

Step	What you record
Classification	Incident Type -- Injury, Illness, Near Miss, or Property Damage -- and Severity, either Minor or Serious. A serious injury or illness is flagged for HQ submission
When & Where	When the incident happened, the Location (free text, up to 500 characters), and an optional Related Event
Young People	Answer Yes or No to Were any young people affected?, then pick anyone involved from the section picker
Adults	Answer Yes or No to Were any adults affected?, then pick the leaders and parent helpers involved -- see The Adults step below
What Happened	A detailed account of what happened (minimum 10 characters), plus Treatment Given if any first aid was given
Review	Check every answer, then click Submit Report

The report is created with a status of Submitted. Read the Review step carefully before you submit -- Scoutworks tells you there that once submitted, the report cannot be edited.

The Adults step

The Adults step covers leaders, group admins, helpers, and visiting adults. Answer Yes and two lists appear:

Select affected adults -- the leaders and group admins in your group.
Parent helpers at this event -- parents who helped at the event this report is linked to. This list only appears when the report has a Related Event and that event had helpers.

Recording a parent helper

A parent who comes along to help is not a member of your group and holds no volunteer role, so they used to appear in neither list -- there was no way to put them on a report at all. They now come from the event's own helper list.

Link the report to an event first. Choose it under Related Event on the When & Where step. Without a linked event there is no helper list to draw on.
Everyone who offered is listed, not just the ones you accepted. A parent whose offer you never got round to accepting may still have been there on the day, and an incident record has to reflect who was actually present.
Tick each helper who was there. Each one shows their name and their relationship to their child.
Say how they were involved. As soon as you tick someone, How were they involved? appears with two choices: Witness / present or Affected. It starts on Witness / present, which is right for most helpers.

Getting that last choice right matters. A parent standing nearby is a witness, and listing them under "who was affected" on a safety record says something that isn't true. The choice applies to every helper you tick on the report, so if one helper was hurt and another only saw it happen, describe the difference in What Happened as well.

Who you can add to a report

Scoutworks records the three kinds of person differently:

	Young people	Leaders	Parent helpers
Where you pick them	Young People step	Adults step, under Select affected adults	Adults step, under Parent helpers at this event
Who appears here	Members of your group, grouped by section	Group admins and section leaders	Parents who offered to help, or were accepted as helpers, on the linked event
Details recorded	First name, last name, date of birth, section	First name, last name, role	First name and last name
How they appear on the report	Their name, with their section in brackets	Their name with a shield icon, marked (Leader)	Their name with a shield icon, marked (Parent helper) or (Parent helper · witness)

Young leaders aren't shown under Select affected adults — they're already listed as members in the Young People step, so picking them there keeps the record consistent.

Report Statuses

Every report moves through a defined workflow:

Status	Meaning
Draft	Saved but not yet submitted
Submitted	Awaiting review
Reviewed	Reviewed and signed off
Closed	Fully resolved and archived

Open any report by clicking its row in the table. The details panel slides in from the right and shows the full incident information, everyone who was involved, and the reporter's details.

Reviewing is a restricted job. A Review card appears for group admins, and for the person your group has named on the Incident Report Approver card under Accident Reports > Settings. They add Review Notes, then click Mark as Reviewed on a submitted report or Close Report on one that has already been reviewed. Other leaders can open a report and read it, but not review it.

Learning and Actions

Recording what happened is only half the job. The Learning & Actions block on the report details panel is where you write down what your group will change as a result.

It asks one question -- What should change as a result of this incident? Write whatever is useful, for example "Move the games chairs to the store before wide games" or "Second first-aider rostered for every outdoor session", then click Save learning. The button stays greyed out until you change the text.

The block sits outside the review workflow on purpose. The report itself can't be edited once submitted, and the lesson from an incident is rarely clear in the ten minutes afterwards. So:

It stays editable at every status, including after a report has been marked Reviewed or Closed. Come back to it a fortnight later when you know what needs to change.
It saves on its own. Writing a lesson down never marks the report as reviewed, and never puts your name on a review you didn't do.
The same people who can review can write it -- group admins, and your group's designated incident report approver. Anyone else who can open the report sees the learning as read-only text once it has been written.

If you fill the learning in while you're reviewing, clicking Mark as Reviewed or Close Report saves both at once.

HQ Reporting for Serious Incidents

When a report is marked as Serious, Scoutworks flags it as requiring an HQ submission. The details panel shows an HQ Reporting Required card with:

A button to Open Scout Association Form (the OLM safety incident form)
Quick Copy Reference fields so you can copy the date, time, location, affected person details, description, and treatment directly into the HQ form
An emergency contact number for serious incidents: 0345 300 1818

Each person listed on the report appears as its own copy-ready block, labelled so you know which part of the HQ form to paste it into: Affected Person for a young person, Affected Leader for a leader, and Parent Helper (witness) or Affected Parent Helper for a parent helper.

After you have submitted the report on the Scout Association portal, click I have reported this to UK HQ to confirm. The report then shows an HQ Reported badge with the confirmation date.

Searching and Filtering

Use the filter bar above the table to narrow down reports:

Search -- free-text search across report content
Advanced Filter -- filter by Status (Draft, Submitted, Reviewed, Closed), Incident Type (Injury, Illness, Near Miss, Property Damage), or Severity (Minor, Serious)
Sort -- sort by incident date, reported date, type, severity, location, event, status, or reporter

Active filters appear as removable chips. Click Clear Filters to reset everything. You can also choose which columns are visible using the column selector icon, and expand the table to full screen with the maximise button.

Bulk Actions

Select multiple reports using the checkboxes in the left column. A bulk actions bar appears with the following options:

Mark as Reviewed -- bulk review all selected submitted reports
Close -- bulk close all selected reviewed reports
Delete -- bulk delete with a required reason (minimum 10 characters)

Deleting a Report

To delete a single report, click the three-dot menu on its row and choose Delete. You must provide a reason of at least 10 characters before confirming. Deletion is permanent.

What's next

Risk Assessments for Events -- learn how to create risk assessments and attach them to events.
Creating Events -- set up meetings, camps, and activities that reports can be linked to.
Parent Helpers and Young Leaders -- how parents offer to help at an event in the first place.