The Health and Safety at Work (Adventure Activities) Regulations 2016 deal with the provision of adventure activities.

The regulations include an exemption for registered schools, tertiary education providers and clubs (or associations representing clubs) under specific circumstances. This fact sheet discusses the exemption in more detail.

Activities that meet the definition of an ‘adventure activity’ in Regulation 4 are required pass a safety audit and be registered by WorkSafe.

The definition in regulation 4 excludes registered schools^[1], tertiary education providers^[2] and clubs (or associations representing clubs) providing activities to non-students or non-members where all of the following conditions are met:

• The activity is only provided for the purpose of encouraging enrolment or interest in the activities of the school or provider (or club).
• The activity is not provided for another purpose, such as a commercial purpose, even if the school or provider (or club) considers this a subsidiary purpose or a consequence of providing the activity.
• The activity is only offered to any particular individual on no more than 12 days in any 12 month period.

This means that commercial activities or activities such as fundraisers will generally not be covered by this exclusion.

A charge for non-students / members to participate in an activity may be acceptable, but only to cover the extra costs of basic disbursements incurred through having additional participants undertake the activity (e.g. the additional food, additional accommodation, additional equipment hire).

WorkSafe will enforce the regulations where it considers a school or tertiary education provider (or club) is providing adventure activities to non-students / members for any purpose other than solely to encourage enrolment or interest in the school or education provider (or club), such as on a commercial basis.

Encouraging interest

WorkSafe generally expects that the kinds of people a school or education provider or club would want to genuinely encourage to have an interest in their organisation are:

• parents or guardians of students / family friends of members
• current or potential members of a board or Board of Trustees (or similar)
• current or potential donors, where the only purpose is to demonstrate the activities provided by the school or provider (or club), and would otherwise not be considered to be provided on a commercial basis. Providing an activity in return for a donation would be considered to be providing the activity on a commercial basis.

WorkSafe will carefully evaluate whether activities are provided to people outside those identified above.

Footnotes

^[1] As defined by section 2(1) of the Education Act 1989.

^[2] As defined by section 159(1) of the Education Act 1989.

Disclaimer

The information in this publication has no statutory or regulatory effect and is of a guidance nature only. The information should not be relied upon as a substitute for the wording of the Health and Safety at Work (Adventure Activities) Regulations 2016. 

While every effort has been made to ensure this information is accurate, WorkSafe NZ does not accept any responsibility or liability for error of fact, omission, interpretation or opinion that may be present, nor for the consequences of any decisions based on this information.