English Table Tennis Scraps the 'Supervision Exemption': The DBS Change and What It Tells Thousands of Clubs

On a late-August morning, my inbox filled with a notice that, if skimmed, would be dismissed like a dry administrative slip. Table Tennis England opened registration for a webinar. No players, no tournament, no single stroke. Only a name — Kyhl Daly, the federation's Designated Safeguarding Officer — and a topic that sounds dry: changes to DBS requirements. But in eighteen years covering this industry, I have learned that notices like this are often where a structure speaks loudest, just in a whisper the crowd cannot hear.

A defensive structure whispers; I have to stop watching the ball to hear it. This time the ball is not on the table, but in a line of English law. And that line, since September 1, 2026, has rewritten how thousands of table tennis coaches and volunteers work with children.

I am writing this not to recount an announcement. I am writing because behind the name Kyhl Daly and the 6-7pm Tuesday, September 29 slot lies a bigger story: the story of how a sport defends itself against the gaps it once left behind.

Context: what DBS is and why a webinar matters this much

DBS — short for Disclosure and Barring Service — is the criminal background check agency for England and Wales. When someone works with children or vulnerable adults, they may need to undergo a DBS check to confirm they are not on a barred list. In table tennis, as in most sports involving children, this is a foundational layer of protection: it does not guarantee a good person, but it stops some bad ones at the door.

What makes this September story notable is not DBS in general, but a specific legal concept: Regulated Activity. This term determines which kinds of work require a DBS check. If a role is classified as Regulated Activity, the person holding it must be checked. If not, they can work without one.

Before September 1, 2026, a loophole existed called the "supervision exemption." Under the old definition, if a volunteer or coach worked with children but another person was always supervising, that role was no longer considered Regulated Activity. The consequence: the person was not required to have a DBS check. The logic behind the loophole seemed sound — if another adult is always beside them, the risk is minimized.

But since September 1, 2026, the Crime and Policing Act 2026 has removed the supervision exemption from the legal definition of Regulated Activity. This means supervised roles are now treated exactly the same as unsupervised ones. A coach standing in a crowded class, with an assistant beside them, must undergo a DBS check just like a coach working alone with a child.

This is a legal change, but it is a tactical change at the deepest layer of the sport.

The webinar: timing, audience and what will be covered

Table Tennis England has assigned Kyhl Daly, the federation's Designated Safeguarding Officer, to lead the webinar. The online session will take place from 6 to 7pm on Tuesday, September 29. Registrants can sign up via the link the federation published.

The target audience is specific. If you are a Club Welfare Officer, if you are part of a club or league committee, or if you are a volunteer who regularly works with children, this webinar is for you. It is not an event for the general audience. It is a working session for those standing at the first fence.

During that hour, attendees will hear about the change in regulations and how it affects them and the volunteers they may work with. They will also learn more about Table Tennis England's DBS processes and the importance of the DBS check in safeguarding children in the sport. The federation has also updated its DBS page for those who want to learn more.

Reading this list, I notice something outsiders often miss: table tennis is an extremely decentralized sport. Unlike a professional football club with a centralized bureaucracy, English table tennis lives on thousands of small clubs, hundreds of local leagues, and a huge corps of volunteers working evenings and weekends. That decentralization turns a legal change into a massive operational problem.

Core analysis: when the legal definition changes, the operating system must change with it

I once wrote a three-thousand-word analysis of how a team organizes its defense, full of charts on the distances between lines and counter-attacking metrics. Almost nobody read it. A week later, a data analyst in Belgium emailed me, praised the piece, and suggested I look into the PPDA metric. From that exchange, I understood something I carried through my career: a dry article can be right, but the letter from Belgium taught me that being right is not always enough.

And this DBS problem is, in essence, the same kind of structural problem. It is not glamorous. It does not appear on a scoreboard. But it determines who is allowed to stand beside a child.

Start with the loophole that has disappeared. The supervision exemption existed on an implicit assumption: that if a child is always within the sight of several adults, the chance of harm is reduced. This assumption sounds correct, but it fails at one crucial point that safeguarding professionals understand well: most abuse does not happen in crowded places, but in transitional moments — when a child goes to the toilet, when practice ends and only one adult remains, when a volunteer drives a child home. Those moments are not "supervised" in the legal sense, even if someone else is nominally in the building.

The 2026 Act acknowledges this belatedly but decisively. By removing the exemption, it says: supervision is not a legal shield. Responsibility cannot be delegated to the presence of others.

For Table Tennis England, this is a change at three layers.

The first layer is legal. Any role involving children in table tennis — supervised or not — now falls within Regulated Activity. This means a large number of volunteers and coaches who previously did not need DBS will have to begin the check process.

The second layer is operational. Every club must review its entire roster of people working with children. They must determine who already has DBS, who does not, who is in process, and who needs to start. For a large club in a city like London or Manchester, this could be dozens of people. For a small club in a rural town, it could be the entire staff.

The third, and perhaps hardest, layer is cultural. Many table tennis volunteers work out of love for the sport. They do not see themselves as employees. When such a person is asked to undergo a background check, their first reaction is often a feeling of being suspected. This is where many sports federations fail: they communicate the regulation as an administrative order rather than an explanation.

That is why I believe Kyhl Daly's webinar matters far beyond an hour of content. It is an attempt to shift from the legal layer to the cultural layer. And that is the hardest layer.

Look at the one number I want to keep from this story, because I believe a well-chosen number can tell a story. It is September 1, 2026 — the moment the supervision exemption disappeared. Before that date, a volunteer could stand in a class of children every Saturday evening without any check. After that date, they cannot. No chart is prettier than that.

I missed the goal at the World Cup, but through that I saw how it was created. I missed Umtiti's 51st-minute goal in the France-Belgium semifinal in 2026 because I was busy noting Fellaini's position in the set-piece defensive zone. But that very moment taught me that a goal is only the result, while the structure is the cause. The DBS change is the same: it may not make headlines, but it is the cause of a new layer of safety for thousands of children.

Data connecting people: what actually changes in English table tennis

To understand why this change matters, one must understand how table tennis is organized in England. It is not a sport run from the top down. It is run from the bottom up, by community clubs, local leagues and a network of volunteers. In such a structure, safeguarding children cannot be the responsibility of one person at the federation's headquarters. It must be the responsibility of each Club Welfare Officer in each locality.

That is why the webinar targets these people directly. They are the ones who will have to explain to their volunteers why a procedure they were once exempt from is now mandatory. And they will have to do so without making those volunteers feel treated as suspects.

This is a pure communication problem, and I have seen it solved well and badly across many sports.

The bad solution is to present DBS as a kind of bureaucratic tax. The good solution is to present it as a shared commitment. When a coach understands that their own check is part of protecting the children they teach, they will no longer see it as suspicion. They will see it as a shared responsibility.

Table Tennis England, through this notice, appears to understand that. The fact that it devotes a separate webinar to explaining "what it means for you" rather than simply publishing the regulation shows it is trying to take the second path.

But I want to raise a question I have not seen anyone ask. This change affects supervised roles — meaning roles that, by definition, have multiple adults present at once. What happens to those working independently? Previously, these roles were already Regulated Activity and already required DBS. So this change does not expand protection for the highest-risk cases — it expands protection for lower-risk ones. That is a detail worth thinking about.

In other words, the new law does not target the biggest hole. It targets a different hole: the lack of consistency in how clubs understand "supervision." Because in reality, two clubs can have two completely different definitions of what it means for a child to be "supervised."

The counterintuitive angle: ambiguity is always the enemy of protection

So far, I have spoken about this change as a step forward. Now I want to look at it from the reverse side, because a decent analyst must examine what a change does not do.

The first thing to face: a background check does not create a safe adult. It only filters out those who have been convicted or placed on a barred list. Most people who could harm children have never been arrested. They pass every check. So if clubs treat DBS as the endpoint of safeguarding, they create a false sense of security.

This is the paradox anyone who has entered safeguarding knows: the strongest layer of protection is not in paperwork, but in culture. A club where every adult feels comfortable speaking up when something seems wrong is safer than a club where everyone has DBS but no one dares to speak.

The second thing to face: cost. Every DBS check costs time and money. For a small club with a tight budget, having to check dozens of volunteers can create a real barrier. In eighteen years covering grassroots sport, I have seen many good initiatives die from administrative costs. If this change causes some volunteers to quit because they do not want the hassle, the end result could be the opposite of the intent: clubs will have fewer quality adults, not more.

The third, and perhaps the most important blind spot: a legal regulation does not enforce itself. The Crime and Policing Act 2026 removed the supervision exemption at the national level. But at the club level, compliance depends on individual people. And what is not monitored tends to be ignored.

This is why the September 29 webinar becomes the heart of the whole story. Not because it will convey a legal fact, but because it is the point of contact between law and reality. A law can be written in a day. But for a law to change how a table tennis club in a small town operates every Tuesday evening, it takes many webinars, many conversations, and much patience.

I once spent two weeks re-watching all 38 Liverpool matches of the 2026-2026 season when the pandemic halted every competition. During that period, I was amazed to discover that Alisson Becker averaged as many as twelve touches outside the box per match to break the opponent's press. Two weeks of Liverpool during the pandemic was a course no school could teach. And the biggest lesson I drew was not about goalkeepers, but about how a role can quietly change when the rules around it change. Club Welfare Officers in English table tennis are standing at a similar moment. Their role has suddenly become heavier, and they need to be equipped for it.

What a webinar can and cannot do

I want to be clear: one online hour from 6 to 7pm cannot train someone into a complete safeguarding officer. That is not its goal. Its goal is more modest, and for that very reason more important: to ensure that those responsible know the law has changed and know whom to ask when they are unsure.

In my work covering table tennis, I am always surprised by the gap between what happens on the table and what happens around it. We spend thousands of words analyzing a spin, a service tactic, a movement pattern. But we spend very little time on the structures that ensure a child can walk into a club and be safe.

That is why I chose to write this. Not because I think DBS is a fascinating topic. Rather, because I think it is a topic that sports media often ignores, and that neglect has a cost.

Return to Kyhl Daly's story. A federation's Designated Safeguarding Officer is an extremely special role. The person in it does not appear on television. They have no sponsorship deals. When the England table tennis team wins a medal, their name is not mentioned. But when a problem occurs with a child in a club, they are the first to be called.

The fact that Table Tennis England has its safeguarding officer lead a public webinar is a cultural signal I want to acknowledge. It shows the federation treats safeguarding as a central part of its activity, not a supplementary document.

But a cultural signal cannot replace resources. And here is the question I leave for policymakers: after the September 29 webinar, how will Club Welfare Officers be supported? Will they have a hotline to call in a difficult situation? Will they have short, readable materials for their volunteers? Will they have a community to share experiences?

A webinar is a beginning. But safeguarding children is a process, not an event.

A short letter at the end

I once wrote analyses praised as intelligent, and no one read them. A letter from an analyst in Belgium taught me that a dry article can be right, but being right is not always enough. I have carried that lesson into every piece since.

And this piece, in a way, is a reminder that there are structures that cannot be measured by a scoreline. When I follow table tennis, I am often swept up in what can be counted: points, metrics, distances covered. But there are things that cannot be counted yet are the foundation of everything. A child feeling safe in a club is something that appears in no data table. But it is the reason this sport exists in its kindest form.

The Crime and Policing Act 2026 removed the supervision exemption. That is a line of text. But behind that line is a question for an entire community: are we willing to do the small, bothersome, unglamorous things to protect those who cannot protect themselves?

A forward-looking point

In eighteen years covering sport, I have learned that the biggest changes rarely begin with applause. They begin with a small notice, a webinar, a line in the law. And then, slowly, they change how people work.

English table tennis has chosen to face a loophole it could have kept ignoring for years. Doing the right thing is rarely free, and it is rarely noticed. But it is worth being written about.

The question is no longer whether English table tennis clubs will comply with the new DBS requirement. The question is whether they will turn compliance into part of their identity — something they are proud of, not something they endure. Because a check only has value when it is carried out by people who believe in the reason behind it.

And that is why I will follow the September 29 webinar — not to report on an event, but to see how a sport is rewriting itself.