Table Tennis England Hosts Webinar on DBS Requirement Changes: When the 'Supervision Exemption' Ceases to Exist from September 1, 2026

On a Tuesday evening in late September, when the scoreboards of domestic table tennis leagues have gone quiet, another meeting will take place. No ball, no paddle, no spectators. Just an online stream and a legal question. Table Tennis England will hold a webinar at 6pm on 29 September, running until 7pm, chaired by Kyhl Daly — the organisation's Designated Safeguarding Officer. The subject: changes to DBS requirements. There is one figure worth starting with. On 1 September 2026, a legal provision known as the 'supervision exemption' was formally removed from the legal definition of Regulated Activity. This is a consequence of the Crime and Policing Act 2026. It means: from now on, a volunteer working with children under another person's supervision will be treated exactly the same as a volunteer working alone. No more grey zones. No more loopholes. No more exceptions. Data does not lie; only the reader has not been honest enough. And the data here says that a significant portion of table tennis's volunteer workforce in England is about to enter a process it has never been through. To understand why this matters for a sport as apparently 'gentle' as table tennis, we must begin with definitions. DBS stands for Disclosure and Barring Service — the United Kingdom's disclosure and barring authority. It conducts criminal record checks on people working in roles deemed sensitive, including work with children and vulnerable adults. In table tennis, DBS applies to coaches, club volunteers, committee members and anyone in regular contact with under-18s. The second core term is 'Regulated Activity'. This is a legal definition describing work requiring the highest level of checking. Previously, the definition contained an exception: if a person worked with children but was always supervised by another adult, and that supervision was 'regular, continual and reasonable', they were not considered to be engaged in Regulated Activity. Consequently, they were not legally required to hold a DBS. The Crime and Policing Act 2026 removed that exception. From 1 September 2026, the supervision factor no longer counts when determining whether a role falls within Regulated Activity. This means thousands of sports volunteers and coaches, table tennis included, will now need a DBS check they previously did not. The 29 September webinar aims to explain these changes to those directly affected: Club Welfare Officers, club or league committee members, and volunteers who regularly work with children. One thing must be said plainly before going deeper. In terms of organisational structure, table tennis is one of the most volunteer-dependent sports in England. Unlike football with its professional academy system or tennis with well-funded training centres, English table tennis operates mainly on community clubs, local leagues and a volunteer network stretching across the country. Any change in legal requirements for that workforce has a knock-on effect that multiplies. I have tracked the organisational structures of European sports federations for years, and what struck me here was not the change itself but its timing and how it was communicated. A law takes effect on 1 September, and a webinar is held on 29 September — nearly a month after the law has taken effect. That lag, in data terms, is a risk window. Look at the structure of the problem the way I always do when analysing a match. In football, xG (expected goals) measures the quality of a chance. In child safeguarding, the equivalent metric is the coverage of background checks. Before 1 September 2026, coverage had a large hole: all supervised roles. After that date, the hole is filled — but only on paper. Filling it in practice depends on each club, each volunteer, each internal process. This is where data and enforcement separate. A law taking effect does not mean every actor complies immediately. The gap between legal effect and practical compliance is where risk accumulates. For a sport with hundreds of clubs and thousands of volunteers, that gap can last months, even quarters. Table Tennis England's webinar, therefore, is not just an information session. It is a tool for narrowing the gap. The question for its organisers is: can a sixty-minute session convert a legal change into behavioural change across the whole system? I have spent many evenings sitting with data longer than with people, and I have never felt lonely. But there is one kind of data that stops me sitting still: data about gaps. In football, a gap in the defensive line is where goals are born. In child safeguarding, a gap in background checking is where risk is born. And risk, unlike a conceded goal, cannot be recounted on video. Let us be specific about what changes. Before 1 September 2026, a table tennis coach teaching children at a community club might not need DBS if he or she always worked under the observation of a responsible adult. Conditions for the exemption included: supervision must be regular, continual, by a competent person, and the supervised person must not have periods without supervision. On paper, these conditions sound strict. In practice, they were flexible to the point of being hard to verify. In a table tennis club environment, how do you establish that a coach is 'never' alone with a child? Table tennis is a sport that runs by pairs and by table. At certain moments, for scheduling or spatial reasons, one adult may be briefly near one or two children without a third person present. Supervising such short moments is very hard to verify on paper. This is precisely why the new law is designed to remove subjective judgement. Rather than asking 'is this person ever alone', the new law asks a simpler question: 'does this role involve regular contact with under-18s'. If the answer is yes, DBS is mandatory, whether or not someone is supervising. This is a more systemic approach. It acknowledges that humans cannot perfectly supervise every moment, and that risk should not be managed by the human eye but by a checking process. To put this in context, look at how other English sports have reacted to similar change. English football, with a more professionally organised system, already had strict DBS processes. But even they had to review their entire grassroots coach roster, some of whom might previously have fallen under the exemption. Sports with high volunteer structures — such as table tennis, badminton, community basketball — are hit harder because their proportion of 'part-time' volunteers is higher. Exact numbers are hard to determine, but the structure is clear. For an average English community table tennis club, the number of volunteers working directly with children might range from three to ten. Of these, a significant portion are parents or former players volunteering, who have never undergone DBS because they always worked under the lead coach's observation. Multiply this across hundreds of clubs in England, and you get a wave of new checking requirements within a short window. This is the point where I want to stop and analyse further. In the economics of sports organisations, there is a concept called 'compliance cost'. It is the total cost — in time, money and human resources — an organisation must bear to meet a legal requirement. In this case, the compliance cost is not the DBS check itself, which is designed to be free or low-cost for volunteers. The compliance cost lies in the surrounding process: identifying the right people to check, collecting documents, submitting applications, tracking progress, storing records and handling exceptions. For a small volunteer-run club, these administrative tasks usually fall to one or two people. And here is where my data on community sports clubs shows a notable pattern: the administrative burden tends to concentrate on the oldest members, who already hold multiple roles at once. The Club Welfare Officer at many English table tennis clubs is often a parent or retired former player who is simultaneously secretary, fixture manager and federation contact. When a new legal requirement is added to their workload, the question is not only 'can they do it', but 'can they do it alongside everything else'. This is why the webinar, though only an hour long, matters far beyond its duration. It does not merely convey information. It creates a common anchor point: a moment when clubs nationwide receive the same message, at the same time, from the same source. In organisational governance, this is called 'structural synchronisation', and it matters more than people think. But synchronising information is not the same as synchronising action. And this is where I want to offer a counterintuitive angle. There is an implicit assumption in how sports media usually reports regulatory change: that if the law is explained clearly, people will comply. This assumption sounds reasonable but runs against behavioural data. Research on compliance behaviour in volunteer organisations shows a different pattern: the decisive factor is not how clear the law is, but how feasible compliance is within limited resources. In other words, a club with three volunteers and one administrator will be less able to comply than a club with ten volunteers and a digitised internal process. Not because they lack awareness, but because they lack bandwidth. And this is the hidden point that may be overlooked in the 29 September webinar: this change, in the short term, may reduce the number of new volunteers joining table tennis clubs. When the entry barrier rises — even by a paper process — some potential volunteers will choose not to take part. In a sport already dependent on volunteering, this is a real risk. This is the crux I want to stress: the law may be right in principle, but enforcement requires more than a background check. It requires a support ecosystem: clear guidance, easy-to-use technical tools, budget for administrative cost, and most importantly, an organisational culture that treats child safeguarding not as a burden but as part of a club's identity. Returning to the webinar. Interestingly, it is designed for three groups: Club Welfare Officers, committee members, and volunteers who regularly work with children. This is not an arbitrary choice. These are three key links in the chain of responsibility. The Welfare Officer is the compliance monitor. The committee allocates resources. The volunteer directly interacts with children. If one of these three links is weak, the chain breaks. In tactical analysis, people often speak of a 'vertical spine' — four players across four lines forming a team's backbone. If the spine is solid, the team is solid. In child safeguarding governance, the equivalent spine is these three links. And as in football, a spine is only solid if all three points are solid, not just one. I have spent years analysing matches and have realised one thing: the biggest mistake is not a mistake at a hard point, but a mistake at an easy one. A team often loses because a simple action is performed carelessly, not because a complex tactic is broken. Similarly, risk in child safeguarding usually comes from simple holes, not complex conspiracies. And this is why removing the 'supervision exemption' matters. It does not solve a complex problem. It fills a simple hole. Now, let us talk about what this article cannot say, and why that matters. There is an inherent limit in any analysis of child safeguarding: we can only measure consequences after they happen, not before they are prevented. This is the problem of 'counterfactual evidence'. No one can prove that a DBS check prevented a specific incident, because an incident that never happened is an incident that cannot be counted. This is why child safeguarding policies often lack quantitative evidence to defend themselves against cost attacks. One can measure the administrative cost of a check. One cannot measure the benefit of an incident that did not occur. This is a data asymmetry, and it keeps prevention policies permanently on the defensive in budget debates. But there is a more constructive way to think about it. In football, we do not measure the value of a defence by goals prevented — because we cannot know how many goals nearly happened. We measure it by indirect indicators: chances broken up, passes intercepted, formation structure. Similarly, the value of DBS can be measured indirectly through safety-culture indicators: the number of clubs with clear processes, the number of trained volunteers, the number of checks completed on time. The 29 September webinar, from this angle, is an opportunity to set safety-culture indicators for English table tennis. It is not just a session explaining the law. It is a starting point for a new measurement cycle. I want to return to a personal story. In 2026, when I first entered sports data analysis, I was once asked in an interview whether I truly understood football, or merely looked at numbers without understanding what they represented. I did not answer with words. I opened my laptop and presented a model predicting the results of the last ten matches based on xG and PPDA, with an error margin of 1.2 matches. I was hired, but at a salary 15 percent lower than a male colleague in the same role. The lesson from that experience applies directly to how I view this DBS change. In both cases, the issue is not whether the law is right. The issue is whether those responsible for enforcement have enough resources to turn the right thing into the feasible thing. A child safeguarding law can be right in principle and still fail in practice if those enforcing it are not adequately equipped. This is a lesson anyone who has worked in administrative systems knows. And it is also why the 29 September event matters more than it appears. Look at the structure of the webinar. It is designed to explain three things: the regulatory change, its impact on each role, and Table Tennis England's DBS processes. These three correspond to three basic questions in any transition: what changes, how does it affect me, and what do I need to do next. But there is a fourth question the source article does not directly address: what happens if I do not comply. This is a question organisations often hesitate to answer clearly, because it involves sanctions. In child safeguarding, the answer is usually: the consequences are not only legal but reputational. A club that suffers a child safeguarding incident can lose its operating licence, its funding, and community trust. These are costs that cannot be counted in money. In financial risk analysis, people distinguish between 'measurable risk' and 'tail risk' — risks with low probability but catastrophic consequence. Child safeguarding is a tail risk. The probability of an incident at a specific club is low, but the consequence when it occurs is irreversible. In risk management, tail risk is not managed by probability. It is managed by process. DBS is that process. Here, I want to return to a thought about the broader meaning of this event. Over years of tracking the development of less-noticed sports, I have noticed a recurring pattern. Major sports — football, tennis, athletics — tend to lead in setting governance standards, because they have resources and media pressure. Smaller sports tend to follow, not because they lack awareness, but because they lack resources to anticipate. The result is a governance gap between sports. This Table Tennis England event is an example of closing that gap. Not because they are ahead, but because they cannot afford to be behind. When the law changes, all sports are affected equally. But smaller sports must work harder to adapt, because they have fewer resources. This is a form of structural unfairness rarely mentioned. The same legal requirement, but different relative compliance costs across sports. For a large federation, one more DBS check on the list may be a single line in a spreadsheet. For a three-person community table tennis club, it may be a real challenge of time and manpower. And this is where Table Tennis England's role becomes more important than explaining the law. The organisation must become a support resource, not merely an information channel. The webinar is one step in that direction, but a one-hour session cannot replace a continuous support system. I wonder whether the association plans follow-up sessions, a guidance handbook, or a support line for clubs in difficulty. These details are not in the source announcement, but they determine the success of a legal change. In football, a good coach does not only give tactics. They build a support system so tactics can be executed: training sessions, video analysis, tactical meetings. A good tactic without a support system is a tactic that will fail. Similarly, a good law without a support system is a law that will be ignored. This is the point where my analysis of this event leads to a counterintuitive conclusion: the value of the 29 September webinar lies not in its content, but in what happens after it. If it is a one-off event, its impact will be limited. If it is the starting point of a sustained support campaign, its impact could be large. And this is where data can help again. By tracking the number of clubs completing the DBS process over time, the association can measure the effectiveness of its communication campaign. If the compliance rate rises quickly, the campaign works. If it plateaus, the campaign needs adjustment. This is an evidence-based approach, consistent with how I approach every problem in my field. I once wrote that there are evenings I sit with data longer than with people, and have never felt lonely. This event reminds me that there is data impossible to see directly — incidents that never happened, risks that never materialised — and they deserve as much attention as the figures shown on a scoreboard. In a match, we usually notice only what happens on the pitch. But what does not happen — goals prevented by a good defensive action — matters no less. In child safeguarding, the same holds. What does not happen is what matters most, and it is the hardest to measure. This is the point I want to leave the reader with as an open question. If the value of a system is measured by what it prevents, not what it produces, how can we fairly evaluate a child safeguarding system? How can we prove that a DBS check is worth its cost, when its benefit is incidents that did not happen? The answer, perhaps, lies in changing how we measure. Instead of measuring by number of incidents, we measure by level of readiness. Instead of asking 'how much have we prevented', we ask 'how much have we prepared'. This is a shift in cognitive framework, and it is not easy. But perhaps that is what the 29 September event is trying to achieve. Not only explaining a legal change, but changing how people think about their responsibility. Because in the end, DBS is not just a background check. It is a statement of values: that children's safety matters more than adults' convenience. And in a sport built on trust and volunteering, that statement needs repeating often, not just once. On a September evening, when the matches have gone quiet, another meeting will take place. No applause, no scoreboard. Just a conversation about responsibility. And sometimes, that is the most important conversation of all. Data does not lie; only the reader has not been honest enough. And in this case, the data says that a maturing sport cannot forever rely on the loopholes of old law. At some point, it must build its own standards. The 29 September webinar is one step in that process. But the question for all who care about English table tennis — and youth sport in general — is: after the webinar ends, what comes next? Will clubs have enough resources to turn information into action? Will the association continue to support once initial attention fades? Will a safety culture become an inseparable part of this sport, or just a paperwork procedure people rush to complete? These are questions without immediate answers. But they are questions worth asking, because the answers will determine whether this legal change is a genuine transformation, or just a fresh coat of paint on an old structure. And in a field where the consequence of failure is irreversible, asking the right question matters no less than giving the right answer. A girl watching football? I answer with 92 pages of data. But there are pages of data that lie in no spreadsheet. They lie in events like the 29 September webinar, meetings without spectators but with influence. And sometimes, those are the events most worth reporting.