If your club is in Glasgow, Swansea or Belfast, most of the safeguarding guidance you find online is written for somebody else. It names Wavepower, it tells you to book a DBS check and it assumes your safeguarding lead is called the Club Welfare Officer. None of that is right where you are.
Here is the short answer. Wavepower is Swim England’s policy and it applies to Swim England affiliated clubs. A swimming club in Scotland works to Scottish Swimming’s Wellbeing and Protection Policy, and its disclosure checks run through the PVG Scheme rather than the DBS. A swimming club in Wales does use the DBS, but it works to Swim Wales’ own Child Safeguarding Policy and Adults Safeguarding Policy, not to Wavepower. The differences are not cosmetic. They change which body you apply to, what your safeguarding lead is called, which courses count, and how often everything has to be renewed.
This guide covers Scotland and Wales in detail, because those are the two regimes we have been able to verify properly against the governing bodies’ own published policies. Northern Ireland gets an honest short section at the end rather than a confident one.
Why this catches committees out
Swimming in Great Britain is not run by one organisation. Swim England, Scottish Swimming and Swim Wales are separate governing bodies with separate policies, and your club affiliates to the one for the country it is based in. The word “British” in front of a swimming organisation usually refers to the performance and international pathway, not to the day-to-day compliance regime your committee lives with.
The practical trap is that England’s compliance material is by far the most published, the most linked and the most likely to surface in a search. A new welfare officer in Cardiff or Aberdeen can spend a whole evening reading a genuinely excellent guide to what Wavepower compliance actually requires and finish it with a to-do list that does not apply to their club. Worse, the parts that look the same are the parts that differ most: everybody has a safeguarding lead, everybody has criminal record checks, everybody has mandatory training. It is the names, bodies and renewal periods underneath that change.
Swimming club safeguarding in Scotland
PVG, not DBS, and it is now a legal requirement
Disclosure checks in Scotland run through the Protecting Vulnerable Groups (PVG) Scheme, administered by Disclosure Scotland. The DBS does not operate in Scotland at all, so an English DBS certificate is not the thing your club needs.
The significant recent change is that PVG membership stopped being good practice and became law. Following the Disclosure (Scotland) Act 2020, scheme membership became a legal requirement for anyone carrying out a regulated role from 1 April 2025, and the new offence provisions supporting compulsory membership came fully into force on 1 July 2025, as set out in the commencement regulations. Disclosure Scotland’s own guidance now states simply that it is a legal requirement to join the PVG scheme if you are going to do a regulated role.
For a club committee, the sentence that matters most sits in Scottish Swimming’s Safer Recruitment Policy (SR4, November 2024): “A PVG Scheme application must be processed for everyone carrying out a regulated role involved in your club. The role cannot be commenced before a PVG is in place.”
That is a hard stop, not a target. If you have historically let a new assistant coach start poolside while the paperwork worked its way through, that habit needs to end, and your recruitment timeline needs to start earlier in the season than it used to.
The rest of the safer recruitment process
The same policy sets out the full process, and several steps are more demanding than clubs expect:
- ID checks for all volunteers and staff, carried out in accordance with the Disclosure Scotland Code of Practice as part of the PVG application.
- A self-declaration form, required for everyone applying for a regulated role and recommended for everyone else, retained under the club’s secure handling policy.
- Two references for every regulated role, from people who are not relatives and who have known the applicant for at least two years, able to comment on their suitability for working with children and young people or adults at risk.
- Induction covering club policies and signature of the appropriate codes of conduct.
- Scottish Swimming membership for all volunteers and staff active within the club. The policy notes that a club failing to ensure every volunteer is a member, no matter how irregularly they help, is deemed to be operating outside the association’s remit, which may affect the club’s insurance cover.
That last point is worth reading twice, because it turns an administrative oversight into an insurance problem.
The Wellbeing and Protection Officer
Scotland’s club safeguarding lead is the Wellbeing and Protection Officer (WPO), not a Club Welfare Officer. Clubs nominate someone for the role to Scottish Swimming, which arranges an induction meeting through its regional development staff.
Training is where the two Scottish acronyms matter. SR4 makes the Child Wellbeing and Protection in Sport (CWPS) workshop mandatory for all individuals in a regulated role, renewed every three years, and the separate Child Wellbeing and Protection in Sport Officer (CWPO) workshop mandatory for all Club Wellbeing and Protection Officers, also renewed every three years. Time to Listen, which an English or Welsh club would book, is not the Scottish course.
The framework sitting above all of this is Scottish Swimming’s Wellbeing and Protection Policy, published as separate documents for children and young people and for adults, covering roles and responsibilities, identifying and responding to concerns, recording, and referral to Disclosure Scotland.
Swimming club safeguarding in Wales
Wales is the half-familiar case, and that is precisely what makes it risky. The vetting body is the same as England’s, so a committee can reasonably assume everything else is too. It is not.
DBS checks do apply. Swim Wales’ safeguarding page tells clubs to identify everyone who needs a criminal record check and states that “Checks must be renewed every three years in line with Swim Wales rules”. Note that this is a Swim Wales rule rather than a legal expiry, exactly as the equivalent renewal period in England is a governing body rule. Your tracking obligation is the same either way, and the practical difficulties are the ones covered in our guide to DBS check tracking for swimming clubs.
The policy set is different. Swim Wales operates its own Child Safeguarding Policy and Adults Safeguarding Policy. There is no Welsh Wavepower and no Welsh equivalent of Swim England’s Club Health Tracker or Stronger Affiliation evidence pack, so a Welsh club should not be searching for one.
The Welfare Officer’s training runs on a three-year cycle. Swim Wales requires the club Welfare Officer to “Attend a Safeguarding Course and a Time to Listen Course every three years”. Time to Listen is shared with England, which is one of the few genuine overlaps, but the three-yearly renewal of both courses is a Swim Wales requirement in its own right.
Concerns are recorded on MyConcern. This is probably the single most concrete operational difference. Swim Wales expects the Welfare Officer to record the details of a concern on MyConcern and to maintain an updated chronology as the concern progresses. A Welsh club still keeps its own written records, but the reporting route runs through a named system rather than a form emailed to a county welfare officer.
The statutory backdrop in Wales includes the Social Services and Well-being (Wales) Act 2014 alongside the Children Act 1989 and 2004, which is why some Welsh guidance uses well-being language where English guidance uses safeguarding language. It is the same duty described in the vocabulary of a different statute.
What about Northern Ireland?
Two things are clear and verifiable. First, vetting in Northern Ireland runs through AccessNI, a branch of the Department of Justice, and not through the DBS or the PVG Scheme. AccessNI offers basic, standard and enhanced checks, and an individual cannot apply for an enhanced check themselves: the application has to be countersigned by an AccessNI registered organisation, which is a real constraint on a small club.
Second, swimming is governed on an all-island basis by Swim Ireland, so a club in Northern Ireland sits under an organisation whose remit crosses the border while its vetting law does not. That combination means a Northern Irish club cannot simply take Scottish or Welsh guidance and substitute AccessNI for the disclosure body.
We are not going to set out the club role names, course names and validity periods for Northern Ireland here, because we have not been able to verify them against a primary source to the standard we hold ourselves to for Scotland and Wales. If your club is in Northern Ireland, start from Swim Ireland’s safeguarding pages and its vetting information, and treat any English guidance you find as background reading only.
The differences at a glance
| England | Scotland | Wales | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Governing body | Swim England | Scottish Swimming | Swim Wales |
| Safeguarding framework | Wavepower | Wellbeing and Protection Policy | Child Safeguarding Policy and Adults Safeguarding Policy |
| Disclosure body | DBS | PVG Scheme, Disclosure Scotland | DBS |
| Club safeguarding lead | Club Welfare Officer | Wellbeing and Protection Officer (WPO) | Welfare Officer |
| Lead’s mandatory training | Time to Listen and Swim England safeguarding training | CWPO workshop, renewed every 3 years | Safeguarding Course and Time to Listen, every 3 years |
| Training for other regulated roles | Swim England safeguarding training | CWPS workshop, renewed every 3 years | Per Swim Wales policy |
| Check renewal | Typically every 3 years under Swim England policy | PVG membership is ongoing, with updates through the scheme | Every 3 years in line with Swim Wales rules |
| Concern recording | Wavepower procedures | Wellbeing and Protection Policy procedures | MyConcern, with chronology |
Use this to orient a new committee member, not as the compliance document itself. Each governing body publishes the authoritative version and each updates it on its own schedule.
What this changes in your club admin
Most of the practical burden lands on the same handful of people it always does, so it is worth being specific about what a committee outside England should actually change.
Rewrite the role description, not just the job title. If your club constitution or your committee role descriptions say “Club Welfare Officer” and you are in Scotland, the title is wrong and so is the training list underneath it. Fix both together, at the same AGM if you can.
Track the right renewal dates. Every regime here runs on three-year cycles for something, but not the same something. A Scottish club is tracking CWPS renewal for every person in a regulated role plus CWPO renewal for the WPO. A Welsh club is tracking two separate courses for the Welfare Officer plus DBS renewal for everyone who needs a check. A single spreadsheet column called “DBS expiry” does not survive contact with either.
Start recruitment earlier. The Scottish rule that a regulated role cannot commence before PVG is in place turns your volunteer pipeline into a scheduling problem. If you recruit new poolside helpers in September, the conversation needs to happen in the summer.
Do not import English document templates wholesale. A code of conduct is broadly portable. A safeguarding policy that cites Wavepower, names the DBS and points at Swim England’s reporting route is not, and adopting it wholesale gives your club a policy it cannot actually follow.
Write down where your source of truth is. The most common failure we see described is not a club ignoring safeguarding, it is a club following the wrong document carefully. Put the correct governing body’s policy link in your handover pack so the next welfare officer starts in the right place. Our guide to swimming club safeguarding best practices covers the habits that hold in every UK nation, and the funding landscape differs by nation too, as covered in our guide to swim club grants and funding.
Frequently asked questions
Does Wavepower apply to swimming clubs in Scotland or Wales?
No. Wavepower is Swim England’s child safeguarding policy and it applies to clubs affiliated to Swim England. A club in Scotland works to Scottish Swimming’s Wellbeing and Protection Policy, and a club in Wales works to the Swim Wales Child Safeguarding Policy and Adults Safeguarding Policy. Guidance written for English clubs will name the wrong disclosure body, the wrong club role and the wrong training courses.
Do swimming clubs in Scotland use DBS checks?
No. Disclosure checks in Scotland run through the Protecting Vulnerable Groups (PVG) Scheme, administered by Disclosure Scotland, not through the DBS. Since 1 April 2025 PVG scheme membership has been a legal requirement for anyone carrying out a regulated role, and the supporting offence provisions came fully into force on 1 July 2025.
Can a volunteer start a regulated role in a Scottish club before their PVG comes through?
No. Scottish Swimming’s Safer Recruitment Policy states plainly that a PVG scheme application must be processed for everyone carrying out a regulated role, and that the role cannot be commenced before a PVG is in place. Committees need to plan recruitment around that lead time rather than letting someone start poolside while the paperwork catches up.
What is the club safeguarding role called in Scotland?
The Wellbeing and Protection Officer, usually shortened to WPO. It is the Scottish equivalent of the Club Welfare Officer in England, but it is a distinct role with its own training. Clubs nominate a WPO to Scottish Swimming, and the Child Wellbeing and Protection in Sport Officer workshop is mandatory for the post and must be renewed every three years.
How often does a Welsh club’s Welfare Officer need to retrain?
Every three years. Swim Wales requires the club Welfare Officer to attend a Safeguarding Course and a Time to Listen Course every three years, and states that DBS checks must be renewed every three years in line with Swim Wales rules. Concerns are recorded on MyConcern with an updated chronology as the concern progresses.
What about swimming clubs in Northern Ireland?
Vetting in Northern Ireland runs through AccessNI, part of the Department of Justice, rather than the DBS or the PVG Scheme. Governance of the sport is all-island through Swim Ireland, so a club in Northern Ireland should work from Swim Ireland’s own safeguarding policies and vetting information rather than from English, Scottish or Welsh guidance.
Whichever nation your club sits in, the admin underneath is the same shape: a register of who holds which role, which checks and courses they hold, and when each one expires. Swimly is club management software built for UK swimming clubs, keeping personnel records and compliance evidence in one place with renewal dates you can see coming. See pricing to find out what it would cost your club.