Our Staff

We recognise that one of the most important factors governing the health and safety of our groups is the quality of our staff. We have therefore done all we can to ensure that our staff provide the very highest standards of health and safety. This includes:

Permanent contracts

Our staff are not employed seasonally and consequently stay with us from year to year, becoming more and more experienced. This is essential as, depending on the risk inherent in an activity, we demand a minimum level of experience before allowing an instructor to lead that activity.

For example, to lead a Blakeney day, an instructor must have at least two years experience of successfully accompanying groups to Blakeney with a senior instructor.

Pay

We value our staff and believe that we should pay them as much as we can afford, not as little as we can get away with. Our staff are therefore paid significantly more than the industry average.

This ensures that our staff can make a career out of working for us, rather than treating us as a stop-gap until another job comes along, again with the consequent result that they become more experienced and we grow increasingly safer.

Recruitment

We do not need to advertise for instructors, partly because our instructors tend to stay with us for many years and partly because our reputation is such that potential new instructors approach us.

We will only appoint new instructors who can provide us with excellent references from a trusted source known to us. We always take up these references.

Induction Training 

We have a six-month probationary period to assess a new instructor’s suitability during which time the trainee instructor will undergo a rigorous training programme.

We will not appoint anyone whom we do not believe will be able to guarantee 100 per cent safety to our groups.

On-going Training

Throughout their time with us, our instructors are regularly assessed and monitored to ensure that they continue to operate under the highest health and safety conditions.

The result of these policies is that we have an unusually well qualified and experienced workforce which is somewhat more mature than you may have encountered at other Centres.