I'd agree with Dave it would cover a claim made against the club by a runner. Very similar to the public liability insurance I have to arrange on the community centre I manage. I reckon it would be difficult to prove a case of negligence. Also if I was managing a running club I would have an addendum to joining that covers "although the club has liability insurance, allruns are undertaken at the participants risk" a bit like the signs you see when parking your car in a public car park. I'd be interested to know if an individual can take out insurance for themselves whilst running?

I think the insurance will be to cover the club against claims from runners, rather than to protect the members themselves.

Managed to get the answer for my problem from a very helpful guy at UK Athletics which was as follows:

' I can confirm that our insurers do not require groups of runners to be led by or under the instruction of a coach or leader. Our insurers recognise the nature of running club activity – they have covered the sport for over 10 years – and accept the fact that runners meet on club nights and run informally in groups that meet their needs. This informality does not in any way cancel insurance cover but should an incident occur then the claimant would have to show that any injury (or third party property damage) was caused by negligence of either another runner in the group or someone acting on behalf of the club who may have been negligent in some way (difficult to define as so few claims arise).  Whilst coaching and leadership may be good practice, it is not essential.'

Just need to change the mindset of the chairman and comittee now.

That is a bizarre one. At Ranelagh Harriers (about 300 members)we don't have qualified group leaders for training runs although in sessions we usually have a coach. I guess we just run at our own risk as in any type of run. Why would anyone expect to be insured on a training run?

i don't think you have a problem.

I am a member of a small club where we have about 25 road running members of which about 10 turn out on a club night.  We generally split into 2 x groups.  1 x group which is made up of social and older runners and the other group made up of runners who are put through a session run by a club coach.  Due to various differences of opinions over the years we have had a rocky ride recently.  This was compounded last year by being informed by the club chairman that the social and road runners had to have somebody qualified to take them out on a run, otherwise they would not be insured by the UKA.

Could anyone cast any light on this for me, as I have searched the UKA, England Athletics and Run Britain to find out if this is the case?  How do you accommodate this at your running club?