How to Perform a Funfair Ride Risk Assessment
Risk assessments are an important aspect for any fairground ride or funfair rental.
It is vital to choose a company that performs the appropriate funfair risk assessments for all of their rides, helping you understand how to prevent injury or harm during your event.
Risk assessments consider what could go wrong while using a specific fairground ride or funfair attraction. They provide key precautionary actions, showing that fairground organisers and operators have considered all possible hazards and how to prevent them.
There are certain steps to follow in order to perform an adequate funfair risk assessment.
1. Note any hazards
It is important to identify any hazards on your funfair ride. This includes anything that causes harm for those on the ride.
Your ride may be harmful for those who are taller or shorter than a specified height. A ride may move at a fast speed, causing a risk of whiplash for some riders or it may swing outwards, posing a risk for guests on the ground.
All of these are examples of hazards and they all need to go into a funfair risk assessment.
It is also important to consider who the hazard will affect, such as people of a certain age or pregnant women.
2. Consider the risk level and create precaution measures
Once you have a list of hazards, you need to consider the risk level for each hazard and how you can prevent it from happening.
If the hazard is children being at risk due to their size, a precaution would be a height bar to exclude those who will be most at risk.
Just because there is a hazard on a particular funfair ride, it doesn't mean harm will be caused. However, the necessary precautions need to be in place to control the situation.
Low risk level hazards still need precaution measures, but they may need less than a hazard that is a greater risk.
Precaution measures could include crowd barriers, lighting, trackways, alternative locations, shelters and more - the list is endless.
3. Record your risk assessment
Make sure to record any findings in your risk assessment.
This includes the potential hazards, who is most at risk, the risk level and what precautions will prevent something from happening.
4. Regularly update your risk assessment
Your risk assessment should be updated constantly, to ensure everyone is aware of any changes in machinery or new hazards.
You can also include pertinent pieces of information in your risk assessment, such as any incident history and future renovations that might affect the function and risk level of the ride.
At We Are Tricycle, we deliver top-quality fairground and funfair rides to customers across the UK.
All of our rides are regularly checked and we complete all the necessary risk assessments to give you and your guests full peace of mind.
Please get in touch with us today to find out more about our fairground and funfair rental options or contact us to book one of our rides or stalls for your next fairground.
Check out our funfair safety FAQs for more information!
Risk Assessment Is Only One Part of Planning a Safe Funfair
A funfair ride risk assessment is most useful when it sits alongside good event planning, competent operation and appropriate technical inspection. Identifying hazards on paper is important, but those findings also need to influence where attractions are positioned, how guests approach them, how queues are controlled and what happens if conditions change during the event.
If you are working through an assessment for fairground rides, our Health and Safety FAQs are a useful source of wider background. You can also read What Are the UK's Safety Standards for Fairgrounds? to understand the broader safety framework surrounding UK amusement equipment.
Consider the Ride, the Site and the People Using It
A useful risk assessment should look beyond the machinery itself. The characteristics of the venue and expected audience can introduce different considerations. A family event containing children's fairground rides and attractions may raise different issues from a large festival featuring big funfair rides, while a corporate event or city-centre installation can have its own access and crowd-flow requirements.
Site layout is therefore closely connected to risk management. How to Place Funfair Rides Around the Site covers positioning attractions in relation to other parts of an event, while How to Use Crowd Barrier Fencing at Events and How to Manage Queues at Funfairs provide further guidance for managing people around busy attractions.
Technical Condition and Inspection Need Their Own Controls
A risk assessment should not be treated as a replacement for technical inspection, maintenance or competent checks. Those processes deal with different aspects of safety. If you want to understand how amusement equipment is examined, see How Funfair Rides are Tested for Safety and Funfair Testing FAQs.
More detailed subjects are covered in What is the ADIPS Scheme?, Non-destructive Testing of Funfair Rides and Funfair Ride Periodic Maintenance. For electrical equipment and power-related considerations, our Fairground Electrical Safety Regulations guide is also relevant.
Look at the Event as It Will Actually Operate
A risk assessment prepared without considering real operating conditions can miss important practical issues. Think about how an attraction will arrive, where vehicles will access the site, how equipment will be assembled, where riders will wait, how boarding will take place and how the attraction will be dismantled afterwards.
Our guides to How Are Funfair Rides Transported?, Funfair Ride Set Up and Tear Down Procedures and How to Safely Load Funfair Rides examine these stages separately. They can be useful when considering hazards associated with the full lifecycle of an event rather than concentrating only on the hours when the ride is open to guests.
Account for Different Riders and Access Requirements
Who will be attending should influence the assessment too. Children, older guests, disabled visitors and people with particular health considerations may interact with attractions differently. That does not mean making assumptions about individuals, but it does mean understanding the legitimate restrictions and operating requirements attached to particular rides.
Related reading includes How Tall Do Children Have to Be for Fairground Rides?, Funfair Ride Health Restrictions and the Equality Act, Disabled Accessibility and Inclusivity at Funfairs & Fairgrounds and Refusing Access to Funfair Rides.
Revisit the Assessment When Weather or Site Conditions Change
An outdoor event is not a static environment. Wind can increase, rain can affect surfaces, access routes can become busier than expected and other activities may alter how people move around the site. Risk assessment should therefore be treated as a working process rather than paperwork that is completed once and forgotten.
For weather-specific planning, see How to Prepare Funfairs for Adverse Weather, How to Keep Funfair Rides Safe in Windy Conditions and Rainy Weather FAQs. These can help organisers think about foreseeable changes before the event begins.
Prepare for the Things You Hope Will Never Happen
Risk assessment also involves considering what should happen if normal operation is interrupted. Organisers need sensible arrangements for communication, access, crowd management and emergencies that are appropriate to the event rather than relying on improvised decisions after something has happened.
Our Funfair Emergency Planning and Crisis Management guide looks at this subject in greater depth, while What to Do in a Funfair Emergency provides additional information. You may also find What Causes a Funfair Ride to Stop? useful for understanding why an attraction stopping does not necessarily mean that a mechanical failure has occurred.
Useful Safety Reading Before Booking Your Attractions
If you are organising council and local authority events, company fun days and corporate events, school events, festival hire or another public gathering, it is worth building safety planning into the project from the beginning rather than treating it as a final administrative task.
Our Are Fairground Rides Safe? page provides an accessible overview for clients, while How We Are Tricycle Protects Your Health And Safety explains more about our own approach. You can find further planning, technical and operational articles in the Guides section, or contact us if you are considering funfair hire for an upcoming event.