Submission on the draft amendments to the Health and Safety at Work (Adventure Activities) Regulations
Overview of the submission
Following the Whakaari/White Island and a subsequent review, MBIE announced changes to the Adventure Activity Regulations regime. These changes involve amendments to the Health and Safety at Work (Adventure Activities) Regulations 2016. Pleasingly, the changes do not differ hugely from those signalled by the 2021 MBIE consultation. Even better, some proposals that Recreation Aotearoa submitted opposition to, have not been taken up.
The main changes are:
- Specific requirements for how operators must assess and manage natural hazard risks
- Beefing up requirements for operators to communicate risks to activity participants
- Stronger operator registration and notification requirements, and
- Reviewing and updating adventure activity safety guidance.
The changes that were considered in 2021 but were not progressed included introducing specific regulatory requirements for landowners/managers and introducing a risk classification system.
MBIE has released a consultation draft of the changes. This has allowed interested parties to comment on the regulations' wording, and other areas like the types of notifiable incidents and the fine amount for breaching the risk communication duty. See the Recreation Aotearoa will submission on that consultation here.
Read our submission
Questions or feedback
If you have any questions or want to share your views, contact our Advocacy Manager, Sam Newton by email: sam@nzrecreation.org.nz.