In this day and age, angling clubs need to be aware of various complicated things, including law, process, health and safety and risk assessment – and make every effort to keep their volunteers safe.
The new Best Practice Guide for Angling Club Bailiffs has been produced therefore for this reason and is intended to be used in conjunction with our existing Elementary Guide to Angling Law & Fisheries Enforcement. Both guides, in fact, form the basis of our Angling Trust Fisheries Enforcement Workshops and indicate a positive response from us to the incident occurring earlier this year when a club bailiff was assaulted in Burton.
Dilip Sarkar MBE, Angling Trust Fisheries Enforcement Manager said: “We are in the process of educating anglers regarding how enforcement works, and how that system can be made to work for us. This we are addressing through making current information readily available, such as our recently published “Elementary Guide to Angling Law & Fisheries Enforcement”, and now this “Best Practice Guide for Angling Club Bailiffs”, both of which form the basis for the Fisheries Enforcement Workshops being run in all eight Angling Trust regions. Angling club bailiffs have a difficult and sometimes potentially dangerous job to do, so working in partnership with the Environment Agency and Institute of Fisheries Management we have published this Guide to help clubs better understand certain issues and emphasise the need to stay safe – and outline the simple precautions that can be taken in order to do so.”
Adrian Saunders, EA Fisheries Enforcement Campaigns Manager said: “The fisheries enforcement partnership with the Angling Trust is an extremely important one, and we are pleased to have the Institute of Fisheries Management’s support. We hope that angling clubs and fishery owners will find the Guides helpful and informative, and would recommend that all clubs consider sending a delegate to a Fisheries Enforcement Workshop.”
You can find out much more about the Angling Trust’s work in fisheries enforcement by visiting our Voluntary Bailiff Service webpage at www.anglingtrust.net/vbs.
