Keyword: Professionalism
An informative and interactive session exploring what effective safeguarding looks like in climbing walls and indoor climbing environments. Led by safeguarding specialists and sector experts, the session will cover current legislation, emerging risks and practical approaches to creating safer spaces for participants, staff and volunteers.
Hosts:
- Dean Straw, Develop Through Challenge
- Helen Murphy, Inclusion & Safeguarding Manager, BMC
- Jamie Smith, ClimbScotland Development Manager & Safeguarding Lead, Mountaineering Scotland
Get up to speed with 14 key reforms, including changes to day one rights, Statutory Sick Pay, unfair dismissal, fire and rehire, and other important areas. Learn what they mean in practice and the steps you can take now to prepare your organisation over the next 12 months. As a part of the session, you’ll have the opportunity to ask WorkNest’s Employment Law expert your pertinent questions relating to the ERA.
Host: Patrick Carroll-Fogg, Employment Law Specialist and Engagement Lead, WorkNest
How hot really is Padel? What’s the next big thing?
Join us for this fireside chat to gain a broader view on the leisure sector at a UK and European level, and where climbing sits within that. Who is spending what, and where? What’s up, what’s down? What does saturation really mean? What’s micro, what’s macro, what’s local, what’s national?
Moderator: Mary-Ann Ochota, Broadcaster
In conversation:
Mark Booth, KPMG Leisure
ABC Members only – join the ABC Board for a workshop and networking event on how we can work as an industry to drive participation in climbing at both local and national level.
Facilitator: Mary-Ann Ochota
An interactive session exploring how TAs and walls can work together for better outcomes. We will look at supporting walls through an incident and where the TA fits in: how they can be represented as an expert witness and how they can best work with walls to provide good documented support. We will also discuss safety checks undertaken by TAs and the benefit of working to agreed standards.
Contributors:
- Pete Nellist
- Dan Crossdale
Join the ABC team and board members for an insight into the work of the ABC over the last year and what’s on the horizon for the association and the wider sector over the next 12 months.
Around 1 in 5 working-age adults in the UK is neurodivergent. That means neurodivergent people are already in your teams, whether or not anyone has named it. Drawing on research directly with climbing wall managers and staff conducted over summer 2026, this session brings the data closer to home: how prevalent neurodivergence is in this workforce, what challenges it creates for managers, and what the evidence says about how to address them. The session will show what neurodivergent staff bring to businesses, what gets in the way of their best work, and what managers and teams can do to support them. Grounded in current UK evidence and industry data, with practical tools and principles that apply across team sizes.
Host: Sarah Castor-Perry, Kernel Consulting
Your members are telling you something before they leave, are you listening? Using data from across the industry, we’ll identify the key moments that make or break retention, giving you practical, high-impact wins to improve your bottom line.
Host: Miura Hawkins, CEO, BETA
