Here is an email from Bryan Dedman, from Brentwood, about how child protection rules create problems for a small local church group:

‘I help run The Club at Brentwood Baptist Church. The Club meets on Monday’s and has a membership of about 12, half boys and half girls in the 11 to 14-age range. We just play games, table tennis, pool, playstation and have short talks. Tonight we may have to close for the night. We have 4 leaders but our 2 lady leaders are not available and we cannot meet as we have girls and no female leader on site. If we cannot find a stand-in lady leader at short notice we should turn the youngsters away from their club.’

‘The rules create other problems. We have a nice building but on a summer evening it would be good to take the youngsters over to the park about 2 miles away. This needs written permission from all parents which means no spontaneous visit can be made easily. Alternatively we can give lifts in cars. However it’s necessary to have at least 2 enhanced CRB checked adults in each vehicle, normally leaving only 3 seats for kids. This means a lot of cars and adults are required to move a small number of kids. Again it destroys any spontaneous action because finding enough available folk who have been checked is not easy.’