Beyond Swim accredits venues to ensure they provide best in class operation and safety, so that you can enjoy a great open water swimming experience.

All of the venues listed on the Beyond Swim venue search page, have achieved one of two levels of accreditation. 

For open water swimmers who wish to swim at an inland venue, Beyond Swim wants to enable the swimmer to have a safe, enjoyable and compelling experience. The Beyond Swim accreditation is a process that a venue operator works through with the support of the Beyond Swim team. 

The accreditation process focuses on safety, to ensure open water swimming operators are following best practice guidelines, implementing the robust safety and standards of competence that are expected in order to achieve Beyond Swim accreditation.

If you are a Triathlon England affiliated club that offers open water swimming sessions to your members only, then Beyond Swim accreditation is free of charge.

The Beyond Swim accreditation process involves two stages:

Self-Declared venue – the venue has completed the Beyond Swim Self-Declared checklist to verify that their documentation reaches Beyond Swim minimum standards.

Beyond Swim Endorsed venue – Beyond Swim have received and reviewed the venue documentation and the Beyond Swim Technical team have confirmed that the venue documentation reaches or exceeds Beyond Swim minimum standards at the time of review.

View the accreditation process in full

To make life easy, we’ve produced a handy process document so you can understand the steps Beyond Swim go through in order to accredit your venue.

Download

Beyond Swim Endorsed Venues have the following in place:

• Permission for open water swimming provision to take place at the venue.
• Evidence of adequate public liability and (where applicable) employers’ liability insurance
• Evidence of undertaken risk assessments against all open water swimming activity
• A Normal Operating Procedures (NOP) manual, which informs operating plans for “normal circumstances”.
• An Emergency Action Plan (EAP), which informs operating plans for “emergency circumstances”.
• A system for decision making for circumstances when environmental conditions that may affect ability to fulfil arrangements described in NOP and EAP.
• All venue staff are competent and qualified to deliver pre-agreed roles and responsibilities in supporting all open water provision.

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