England Table Tennis Removes the Supervision Exemption: From 1 September 2026, Every Coach Working With Children Must Undergo a DBS Check

On the evening of Tuesday 29 September, from 6pm to 7pm, an online webinar will run for exactly sixty minutes. There will be no table set up, no applause, no electronic scoreboard. Just one person in front of a camera: Kyhl Daly, the Designated Safeguarding Officer at Table Tennis England, explaining a change in the law that most fans will never read about on a sports news page.

After years of watching and writing about table tennis, I have learned an uncomfortable lesson: the changes that carry the most weight in a sport rarely appear in a rally. They appear in an administrative briefing, in a clause of legislation, in a Tuesday evening that nobody streams live. Amid the roar of the crowd, I have learned to listen to the silence of the arena.

The 29 September webinar is one of those silences. And it deserves to be heard — because what is discussed there will reshape how thousands of adults come into contact with children in English table tennis.

What changes from 1 September 2026?

The Crime and Policing Act 2026 removed the "supervision exemption" from the legal definition of Regulated Activity. Before this point, some volunteers and coaches working with children under supervision were not required to undergo a DBS check. From 1 September 2026, that is no longer true: supervised roles are treated exactly the same as unsupervised ones.

To understand why a clause that sounds so technical matters, it must be placed against three things that overlap in England's sports safeguarding system.

DBS — the Disclosure and Barring Service — is the UK government agency responsible for criminal record checks for people working with children or vulnerable adults. A DBS certificate is not a single document; it has several levels. A basic check lists only unspent convictions. A standard check adds certain cautions and penalties. An enhanced check includes information held by local police. And the highest level — enhanced with a barred list check — is the level required for anyone performing Regulated Activity.

"Regulated Activity" is a legal term, not a feeling. It describes work — paid or voluntary — in which the person may be alone with, or in regular close contact with, children or vulnerable adults. Anyone doing that work is legally required to hold an enhanced DBS check with a barred list check.

But here is the crux: for years, the definition of Regulated Activity contained a loophole known as the "supervision exemption". Under this clause, if a volunteer or coach worked with children but someone else with responsibility was always present and actively supervising, the work was not considered Regulated Activity. Which meant: that person was not required to undergo a DBS check.

On paper, this was a reasonable choice within its limits. If a responsible adult is always beside you, the risk was assumed to be mitigated. But in practice, "always supervised" is a far more fragile assumption than it promises — especially in a sport like table tennis.

I once stood in the corridor of a small sports hall during a junior event. Five tables, two coaches, roughly twenty children. On paper, it was a supervised session. But when a child stood waiting in the corner, or when a coach took a player aside to correct their grip, the thing called "supervision" dissolved within seconds. There are gaps the human eye cannot fill, and the law relies on the assumption that people can fill them.

To be clear: this is not a story about Table Tennis England doing something wrong. It is a story about a legal system that has changed, and a governing body that must now interpret that change for its community.

What actually changes in practice?

From 1 September 2026, the line between "supervised" and "unsupervised" — the old classification axis — no longer carries any legal weight. A supervised role is now treated identically to an unsupervised one. If you are a volunteer coach teaching table tennis to children, and your work falls within the definition of Regulated Activity, the presence of another adult nearby is no longer a factor that exempts you from a DBS check.

There are three practical consequences that any club will feel.

First, it significantly expands the number of people who must be checked. Previously, a club might have three head coaches checked, while a group of volunteer assistants working under their supervision were not. After the change, if those assistants perform Regulated Activity, they too must enter the process. The number of people requiring checks in a club could double or triple, depending on its structure.

Second, it changes how clubs assign roles. If "supervision" is no longer a legal shield, clubs must confront an old question with a new answer: who actually works with children? Not who stands in the room, but who holds direct responsibility.

Third, it places an administrative burden on volunteers who already give their time for free. A volunteer teaching table tennis to children on a Saturday evening must now complete a criminal record check — with paperwork, waiting times, and costs, although DBS offers a free mechanism for volunteers in many cases. It is a barrier, but a reasonable one.

This is precisely why the 29 September webinar exists. Table Tennis England wants to explain to clubs and leagues what is changing, for whom, and from when — before it becomes a compliance problem. Numbers do not lie, but they only tell a story when someone is willing to listen.

Who is the webinar for, and what will it cover?

Table Tennis England identifies four groups who should attend: Club Welfare Officers, club or league committee members, and volunteers who regularly work with children.

The choice of these four groups is not random. It maps out a landscape of responsibility. The Club Welfare Officer is the person primarily responsible for safeguarding children in the club. The committee makes policy and resource decisions. And volunteers are the ones in direct contact with children. A legal change only enters reality when all three levels understand it at once. If only the committee understands, policy stays on paper. If only volunteers understand, they lack the authority to reorganise their work. If only the welfare officer understands, they become a lonely gatekeeper.

During the webinar, attendees will hear about the regulatory change and how it affects them and the volunteers they work with. They will also learn more about Table Tennis England's DBS processes, and about the importance of the DBS check in safeguarding children in the sport.

The second point — the importance of the DBS check — is the easiest to overlook and the most worth discussing. Because the line between "compliance" and "genuine protection" does not always overlap.

A DBS certificate only confirms that a person has not been arrested or convicted of an offence recorded on a relevant list. It says nothing about how that person behaves in a training hall on a Saturday evening. It says nothing about how they respond to a crying child, or about the grey areas the law cannot reach. A DBS check is a floor, not a ceiling. Holding a webinar to explain it, therefore, matters more than its administrative appearance suggests.

Why is table tennis a special case?

There is a reason this change stings table tennis more than a team sport.

Table tennis is structurally decentralised. It happens in village halls, community centres, and small training rooms a club rents by the hour. A typical table tennis club is not a vast academy with hundreds of athletes and a bureaucracy. It is usually a group of ten to fifty people sharing a space, with a few part-time or volunteer coaches.

That creates two important characteristics.

First, the rate of close contact in table tennis is unusually high relative to its scale. Table tennis coaches often stand very close to students to adjust posture, to observe racket angle, to correct wrist movement. In many sports, the physical distance between coach and athlete is greater. In table tennis, it can be just a few dozen centimetres.

Second, table tennis is a sport with highly individualised training. A session can be one coach and one student in a corner of the hall, while others train at other tables. On paper, it is a supervised group session. In reality, it is a private interaction in a crowded but dispersed space.

That is exactly the kind of situation the supervision exemption was meant to handle. And it is exactly the kind of situation the supervision exemption never truly handled — because "supervised" is a legal status, while "safe" is a lived one. Between those two states lies a gap that no clause of legislation can bridge.

I once sat in the stands during a three-day junior table tennis tournament. What I remember is not the finals, but the quiet mornings, when only three tables were in use and one coach taught a single child in the corner of the hall. None of us would call that a risky situation. But if we are honest, we must admit it was supervised mostly by eyes, and eyes are not always in the right place.

An outsider's view: what can Vietnam and Asia learn?

There is one thing I, writing from Southeast Asia while living in the heart of another sports market, have learned from this story.

In Vietnam and many Asian countries, we have regulations on safeguarding children in sport, but we do not yet have a centralised, mandatory, cross-searchable criminal record checking system like DBS. Safeguarding children in our table tennis clubs rests largely on personal reputation, community relationships, and goodwill. That has strengths — it is close, flexible, low on bureaucracy. But it also has a fatal weakness: it offers no verifiable minimum floor.

England's table tennis story is not one for us to copy mechanically. It is one that should make us ask: if a child in our club were harmed, do we have a clear process to handle it? Do we have a designated responsible person? Do we have any minimum way of checking who is allowed to be in contact with children?

This is the kind of information gain I always look for when following different sports: not a model to imitate, but a mirror to see ourselves.

A contrarian angle: the supervision exemption was never a shield

There is a way to read this change as bureaucratic tightening: the state adds paperwork, clubs add work, volunteers add barriers. That reading is not wrong, but it misses the most important point.

What is striking is not that the new law is stricter. What is striking is that the old law rested on a false assumption for years without anyone being forced to look it in the eye. The supervision exemption existed because people believed that the presence of another adult equalled safety. But presence is not protection. An adult standing in the room does not automatically prevent anything; they only prevent something if they know where to look, and if their responsibility is clearly defined.

In other words, the supervision exemption was a loophole disguised as a safeguard. Removing it does not create a new problem; it exposes an old one. And here is the counter-intuitive point I believe is central: more criminal record checks do not automatically create a safer environment.

What genuinely protects children is something harder to measure: a club's culture. Whether a child knows who they can talk to. Whether a coach knows they will be listened to if they report something suspicious — and that reporting will not be seen as betraying a colleague. Whether a committee understands that safeguarding is not a box to tick, but a continuous, quiet, and often unrewarded process.

That means clubs should not stop at completing paperwork to satisfy the law. But it also means we should not dismiss paperwork. A poor minimum floor is still better than no floor at all. The problem lies only here: do not mistake the floor for the whole house.

What should clubs do now?

For table tennis clubs in England, several practical steps follow from this change.

One: review the full list of people who regularly work with children in the club — not just head coaches, but assistants, session leaders, transport volunteers, and anyone with a direct contact role. The question is not "is this person supervised", but "does this person perform Regulated Activity".

Two: send someone to the 29 September webinar to grasp the change from the official source, rather than hearing it retold through layers of hearsay. DBS and Regulated Activity rules are the kind of information where a small misunderstanding can open a large gap.

Three: revisit the role of the Club Welfare Officer. If "supervision" is no longer a legal shield, the human role — the responsible person, the designated person, the one whose name children and parents know — becomes more important, not less.

Four, and this is the hardest: talk about safeguarding as a normal part of club life, not as a frightening subject raised only when something goes wrong. A club that talks about it regularly is a safer club than one that only talks about it when asked.

Closing thought

Table tennis is a sport of small distances. The distance between two rackets, between two balls, between a decision and a mistake. My years close to table tennis have taught me that the smallest distances are often where everything is decided — and also where everything is easiest to overlook.

From 1 September 2026, English table tennis will have to look at one such small distance. The regrettable part is not having to look. The regrettable part is needing a law to force us to look.

When the arena lights go out, I still hear my own question: if the law had not changed, would we have looked on our own? And if the answer is no, then this change — late as it is — is still a change worth having.