When the 'Person Standing Beside' Is No Longer Exempt: Table Tennis England Rewrites Its Child Protection Perimeter

On a Sunday afternoon at a small table tennis club, a young person stands at the corner of the table holding a basket of balls. They do not coach, they do not set drills, they simply stand beside a certified coach, pick up balls for the children, and occasionally adjust the grip of a ten-year-old's paddle. In the club records they are listed as a 'support volunteer'. For years in England, people like this did not need a criminal record check, purely because a responsible adult was standing nearby to 'supervise'. The law called this the 'supervision exemption'. From 1 September 2026, that door closes.

This story rarely appears in sports bulletins, because it has no decisive rally, no scoreline, no moment of victory or defeat. But for anyone who has stood in the corridor of a table tennis club on a Saturday morning, watching dozens of children flood in with only three adults to look after them, this is more important than any final.

In this piece, I want to dissect a seemingly dry legal change in English table tennis: the arrival of the Crime and Policing Act 2026, the removal of the 'supervision exemption' from the legal definition of Regulated Activity, and the webinar Table Tennis England is hosting to explain it. But I do not want to repeat the announcement. I want to find the gap that the announcement is trying to close, and ask whether a criminal record check actually fills that gap or merely makes us feel a little better.

Context: a system designed with borders

To understand why this change matters, one must understand how England organises child protection in sport. At the centre sits the DBS, the Disclosure and Barring Service, responsible for criminal record checks and decisions on whether a person is barred from working with children or vulnerable adults.

A DBS check is not merely a question of whether someone has a conviction. It queries national databases, cross-references barring lists, and gives an employer a picture of potential risk. In table tennis, as in most sports with children, the DBS is part of what is called safeguarding.

But the DBS does not apply to everyone. It applies only to those undertaking 'Regulated Activity'. That definition is narrow and technical: it covers roles with frequent, unsupervised contact with children or vulnerable adults. A coach teaching a weekly junior group, a junior team manager, a changing-room attendant.

Two words are decisive here: 'frequent' and 'unsupervised'. If a person's contact was infrequent, or if they always worked under the supervision of a responsible adult, they could previously fall outside Regulated Activity and therefore not require a DBS check. This is the 'supervision exemption', and it existed for years as a lawful loophole.

I picture this system as a table tennis table with painted lines. There is a baseline, a service line, a centre line. The rules apply only when the ball lands inside the marked area. But in real life, children do not move along the lines. They stand at the edge of the table, they chase balls into corners, they talk to adults while waiting their turn. And the distance between 'supervised' and 'unsupervised' in law does not match the distance in reality.

That is why the Crime and Policing Act 2026 does something simple but systemic: it removes the supervision exemption from the legal definition. From 1 September 2026, a supervised role is treated identically to an unsupervised one. In other words, if you work with children within Regulated Activity, the presence of someone beside you is no longer a reason to avoid a DBS check.

What actually changes, and why it is no small thing

Set the legal language aside and look at a typical English table tennis club. You have a head coach who has held a DBS for years. You have a few assistant coaches, also checked. And you have a group of volunteers: parents rotating duties, students helping for experience, former junior players lending a hand at weekends. That third group is often the thinnest on paperwork, and the closest to the children.

Previously, if these volunteers always worked under the eye of a certified coach, they might not need a DBS. That saved clubs time and money. But it also created a grey zone: who is actually the supervisor? In a session with thirty children and two adults, is the second adult supervising anyone, or do they themselves need supervision?

A coach once told me something I never forgot: in youth sport, there are always more adults than you think, but always fewer people actually accountable than you need. Removing the supervision exemption does not solve that shortage of accountability, but it removes an excuse. From now on, a club cannot chant 'this person only assists, no check needed' as a default mantra.

Notably, table tennis has a particular trait that makes this change more necessary. Unlike football, where children run across a wide pitch and adults tend to stand beyond the touchline, table tennis takes place in a small, enclosed, often indoor space, with very short distances between adults and children. A coach can stand behind a child, hold their hand to correct a stroke, for a full hour. Physical closeness is the essence of this sport, not the exception.

That is why classifying a role as 'supervised' or 'unsupervised' is far harder in table tennis than in other sports. Where is the supervisor in a space where everyone stands a few metres apart? Can the supervisor see the hand adjusting a child's wrist, or only the backs turned toward them?

System mechanics: from the Act to a webinar viewed from Shenzhen

Table Tennis England is the governing body for table tennis in England, and it has a position called Designated Safeguarding Officer. The person currently holding that role is Kyhl Daly. Kyhl Daly will lead an online webinar taking place on Tuesday 29 September, from 6 to 7 pm.

This webinar is not for everyone. It targets a specific group: Club Welfare Officers, members of club or league committees, and volunteers who work regularly with children. These are the people at the intersection of legal duty and daily reality. They are the ones who must decide who is allowed to stand beside children next Saturday morning.

The webinar content revolves around three axes. First, the regulatory change: the Crime and Policing Act 2026 removing the supervision exemption from 1 September 2026. Second, what this means for attendees and for the volunteers they work with. Third, Table Tennis England's own DBS processes and the importance of DBS checks in safeguarding children in the sport.

Reading these three axes closely, I notice something interesting about organisational tactics. Table Tennis England did not simply issue a notice and leave clubs to cope. It chose to run a live explanation, with an accountable person standing ready to answer questions. In the language I still use when analysing matches, this is a decision about space: rather than letting the gap between law and enforcement fill itself randomly, they create an appointed point for everyone to look at the same map.

I once saw the opposite. At a junior event I followed years ago, organisers announced a new registration rule but held no explanation session. The result was that each club understood it differently, and on competition day there were three different ways of handling the same situation. The gap between text and enforcement does not vanish on its own; it merely moves from one place to another, usually to the place fewest people are watching.

Table Tennis England proactively hosting a webinar shows they understand this. But it also raises a question I will return to later: whether a single explanation session is enough to change the habits of hundreds of small clubs, where the manager is often a volunteering parent with no time to read legal documents?

Tactical analysis: three layers of impact

When a legal change like this enters a sport, it does not affect everyone evenly. It affects by layer, and each layer has its own logic. I want to break it into three: the operational layer, the financial layer, and the cultural layer.

Operational layer: the task of reclassifying every role

The first layer is operational, where everything is measured by who does what, when, and where. Before 1 September 2026, a club could exist with a simple staffing chart: a few people with DBS, the rest 'supporting under supervision'. After that date, the chart must be redrawn from scratch.

Every role needs reclassification. Who has frequent contact with children? Who works in the same space but does not directly coach? Does the person at the front desk greeting children fall within Regulated Activity? What about the person filming junior matches? What about the person driving children home after practice?

This work is tedious but cannot be skipped. And it demands something small clubs often lack: the time of a person who understands the law. In many clubs, that person is a parent juggling duties, working by day and reading guidance by night. Removing the supervision exemption is, in principle, a step forward, but operationally it adds a burden to precisely those who are most fragile.

Financial layer: the cost of safety

Second is the financial layer. Every DBS check carries a cost, and that cost is not small for a local club. If you previously needed checks for three people, you may now need them for ten. The number multiplies, and it lands on an already tight budget.

There is another way to see this. For years, British youth sports clubs have relied on a vast volunteer workforce, often unpaid. When you ask a volunteer to pay for their own DBS check, you create a barrier. Some will leave. Others will stay but with a different mindset: no longer giving unconditionally, but carrying an added obligation.

This does not mean the change is wrong. It means the cost of safety must be seen honestly. If a club loses two good volunteers to check costs, the price is not only money but the time those children no longer spend being coached. The problem is one of balance, and it has no universal answer.

Cultural layer: from compliance to habit

Third, and in my view most important, is culture. A rule only has power when it becomes a habit. Previously, the culture of many clubs was a culture of trust: people trusted each other because they knew each other, shared a neighbourhood, had children at the same school. A DBS check, in some eyes, was an unnecessary suspicion cast on decent neighbours.

Removing the supervision exemption forces that culture to shift. It does not say your neighbour is a bad person. It says the system should not depend on whether your neighbour happens to be good. That is a subtle but profound shift: from personal trust to systemic assurance.

Based on my experience following matches and youth programmes, this cultural shift is always the slowest part. The Act takes effect on 1 September 2026, but a club's habits may take years to catch up. And during that gap, it is the children who bear the risk.

A blind spot few mention: a criminal record check is not protection

Here I want to turn in a different direction, and this is where I believe every discussion of DBS is missing something.

There is an implicit belief that a DBS check closes the question of safety. If a person has a DBS, they are deemed safe. If not, they are deemed a risk. This view is convenient, easy to apply, and fundamentally wrong.

A DBS check tells you whether a person has a relevant criminal history. It does not tell you whether that person has patience with a slow-learning child. It does not tell you whether they know how to set boundaries in conversation. It does not tell you whether they are going through a personal crisis. And most importantly, it does not tell you what will happen in a crowded, tiring session when every adult has run out of energy.

This is the blind spot I want to name: DBS is a filter, not a fence. A filter holds back the worst records, but it does not create a safe environment. A safe environment is created by things far harder to measure: a culture of reporting, transparent interactions, assigning adults so a child is never alone with one adult, and a climate in which a child feels able to speak up if something is wrong.

I once observed a club with full DBS paperwork for every adult, yet missing one basic thing: no one on the committee had ever sat down to ask the children how they felt. The records were complete, but the listening was empty. That is why I always look at the gap between paperwork and reality, rather than at the paperwork itself.

Does removing the supervision exemption solve this blind spot? The honest answer is no, but it removes one of the easiest excuses. When you can no longer say 'this person only assists', you are forced to look at their real role. And when you look at their real role, you have a chance to realise the true shield is not in the paper, but in how you organise space and time around the children.

A contrarian angle: tightening creates new gaps

Now I want to push the argument one step further, and this is where I know I will not please the strongest advocates of strict regulation.

Every tightening of a rule creates pressure, and pressure always finds a way out. When you require everyone working with children to hold a DBS, you inadvertently create a scarcity: fewer eligible adults. And in a scarce environment, what gets cut first is often not the number of sessions, but the number of adults per session.

Picture a small club with ten volunteers, four of whom will not or cannot obtain a DBS. If those four leave, the club has two choices: shrink the junior programme, or continue with fewer adults. The second looks easier operationally, but it creates a paradox: fewer adults means each adult does more work, grows more tired, and the real supervision ratio per child drops.

In other words, a rule designed to increase supervision may, under certain conditions, reduce supervision in practice. This is not an argument against the rule. It is a warning about enforcement. A legal change is only as good as the way it is implemented, and implementation always depends on local resources.

This leads me to an observation about how Table Tennis England is handling the matter. Hosting a webinar is a step in the right direction because it creates a space for explanation. But a one-hour webinar cannot replace a continuous support mechanism. The real question is not 'what does the webinar cover', but 'after the webinar, who will help the smallest club in the system get everything right'.

There is another point worth considering. When a rule becomes more complex, it creates a new intermediary layer: people who specialise in paperwork, people who understand the law, people who advise. This can be good, professionalising safeguarding. But it can also be bad, pushing responsibility away from those who actually stand in the training hall. And in table tennis, where the distance between adult and child is a two-metre-seven table, responsibility cannot sit in an office hundreds of kilometres away.

Back to space: lessons from what is left unwritten

I have spent most of this piece on what Table Tennis England's announcement does say. Now I want to talk about what it does not say.

The announcement states the webinar takes place on Tuesday 29 September, 6 to 7 pm. It lists the audience and the content to be covered. It mentions the Crime and Policing Act 2026, the date 1 September 2026, and the removal of the supervision exemption. All accurate and necessary.

What is left unsaid is what your club will look like in October 2026. How many volunteers will stay? How many children will lose a place because a class shrank? Who will sit down on Tuesday evening to hear Kyhl Daly explain, and who will never know the webinar happened at all?

This is why I always start analysis from a specific moment rather than a document. A document tells you what must be done. A moment tells you what will actually happen. And in most cases, the gap between the two is where the real work lies.

When I sat on the coaching bench, I learned that a tactical diagram only has value when it matches the actual capabilities of each player. A perfect diagram on paper can become a disaster on the court if it demands things the team does not have. The same is true of child protection rules. A rule that is right in principle can still fail in enforcement if it ignores the resources, time, and habits of those who must live with it.

A tactical wizard is not someone who sees more, but someone who looks where others forget to look. And the most forgotten place in any youth sport reform is not the Act, but the club corridor at seven in the evening, when the last manager turns off the lights and wonders whether they are doing everything right.

What to watch after 29 September

The Table Tennis England webinar is a starting point, not an end point. What is worth watching afterwards is not how many people attended, but how many clubs actually redraw their staffing chart. In sport, as in data analysis, the easiest metric to measure is rarely the most important one.

I will watch three things. First, how many clubs publicly disclose their new DBS process, because transparency is the first sign of real change. Second, feedback from volunteers, especially young ones, who may feel unfairly suspected. Third, the children: whether they have more trustworthy adults in the hall, or fewer.

The question I leave here is not whether removing the supervision exemption is right. It is right. The question is whether we have enough patience to turn something legally right into something humanly right. And in table tennis, where everything happens in a space so small that nothing can be hidden, the answer will arrive sooner than we think.