Table Tennis England Hosts Online Webinar on DBS Rules: Child Safeguarding in Table Tennis Enters a New Standard from 1 September 2026

At 6 p.m. local time on 29 September 2026, Kyhl Daly — Designated Safeguarding Officer at Table Tennis England — will sit in front of a camera and spend a full hour talking about pieces of background-check paperwork. No rally will be replayed. No player will sit down for an interview. Yet that online webinar may be the most important event English table tennis stages this season, because it touches something every competition relies on but rarely mentions: the safety of the children who hold the bat. A star does not wait for the spotlight; it waits for a single glance. But before a young talent can shine under the arena lights, someone has to check whether that child is standing beside safe adults. That is the work of the DBS, and it is why Kyhl Daly's webinar deserves more coverage than its dry exterior suggests. DBS stands for Disclosure and Barring Service — the criminal-record checking body set up by the British state to screen people who work with children and vulnerable adults. A DBS check says nothing about how well someone plays table tennis. It answers a single question, and answers it bluntly: does this person have a history that disqualifies them from contact with children? British law contains a concept called Regulated Activity. When someone regularly works with children and that work is legally defined as Regulated Activity, they must undergo a DBS check. Previously, that definition contained a loophole known as the 'supervision exemption'. It allowed some volunteers and coaches working with children under someone else's supervision to avoid a DBS check. For years that loophole was treated as reasonable. The argument was that if another adult is always present, the risk is contained. But real cases show that supervision does not always happen as it does on paper, and a person with bad intentions can wait for the brief moments when the supervisor looks away. From 1 September 2026, the Crime and Policing Act 2026 removes that loophole. The supervision exemption disappears from the legal definition of Regulated Activity. A volunteer working under supervision is now treated exactly like someone working unsupervised. There is no grey zone left, and no more 'someone else was standing next to me, so I did not need a check'. For English table tennis, this is a systemic change. A small club may have dozens of volunteers: people running junior sessions, handling logistics for youth tournaments, coaching a small group during practice hours. Many of them had never been DBS-checked before. After 1 September 2026, all those roles fall under the same standard. This change does not only affect the people at the table. It spreads to junior tournaments run by clubs, table tennis holiday camps, and weekend social sessions. Any activity involving children and regular adult contact comes under the new law. For a sport with a dense grassroots tournament system, the number of people needing a DBS check will rise considerably. That is why Kyhl Daly's webinar matters. It takes place online, from 6 to 7 p.m. on 29 September 2026, and registration is now open. The target audience is clear: Club Welfare Officers, members of club or league committees, and any volunteer who regularly works with children. The session revolves around three pillars. The regulatory change comes first, specifically the removal of the supervision exemption and what it means for each individual. The DBS process at Table Tennis England follows, from how checks are carried out and who is responsible, to what happens when an application fails. The final pillar covers the importance of DBS checks in protecting children in the sport. Notably, the webinar is not only for managers. It is also for the people who stand at the corner of the hall, pick up balls, line children up, and think 'I am not doing anything important'. That group is hit hardest by the legal change, because it used to sit inside the exemption. Based on my experience following matches and grassroots competitions across several countries, I have noticed something: small clubs are always the first to feel pressure when rules change. They have no legal department, no dedicated staff. One coach doubles as accountant, secretary and social media manager. When the law tightens, the burden does not fall on big federations but on the woman checking a list at a club on the edge of London every Tuesday night. That is also why the webinar is designed to answer concrete questions rather than simply read the law aloud. Participants will learn exactly which group they belong to, what they need to do, and in what order. For those who have never encountered the concept of Regulated Activity, this is a chance to understand their obligations before everything becomes mandatory. But looking at this purely as paperwork misses something bigger. A DBS check goes beyond documents. It is a moral milestone. Youth sport runs on trust. Parents hand their children to a club, to a coach, to a hall they have never stepped into. They give away what they value most and receive only a promise. A DBS check is how that promise gains substance: a record verified by the state, rather than plain good faith. Disappointment is also a form of growing up. Here, the growth belongs to an entire system. English table tennis accepting that it must redo its processes, retrain volunteers and run a webinar explaining dry legal changes to the people on the front line is a sign of a governing body that has recognised a flaw and set out to fix it. Talent is never loud; it lies quietly in a corner of the court, waiting for someone patient enough. But a young talent needs something else too: an environment where safety does not depend on luck. There is a contrarian view worth weighing here. Many in grassroots sport argue that background checks are a burden, that they drive away kind-hearted volunteers, that they turn teaching children table tennis into bureaucratic procedure. That argument is partly right in operational terms. An adult willing to sacrifice their evenings to teach children may walk away when asked to fill in three forms and wait several weeks. But the cost of not screening is higher. Table tennis is a sport with little distance between coach and pupil. Small halls, small tables, a coach sitting beside a child, hands touching hands to adjust a stroke. That closeness is exactly what makes the sport beautiful, and exactly what creates risk. The supervision exemption assumed that having someone watching nearby was enough. But when a child is harmed in silence, the person standing nearby may never see it. The change under the Crime and Policing Act 2026 therefore goes far beyond paperwork. It is an admission that the presence of another adult is not a shield. Only screening is a real shield. I have followed many youth tournaments in both Vietnam and China, where rules on safeguarding children in sport are taking shape at different speeds and in different ways. In many places, the question 'who checked this person' still has no standardised answer. Looking at English table tennis, we see a model worth learning from — not because it is perfect, but because it dares to correct itself. The webinar on 29 September 2026 may not be the spotlight. It is the glance a sport casts towards children who have never been looked at. For clubs and volunteers active in England, this is the moment to act before the rules take effect. Working out who at your club falls under Regulated Activity, who needs a DBS check and who needs retraining should start now, rather than waiting until 1 September. Clubs that move first will turn this change into an advantage, because a safe environment is what parents look for when choosing where to send their children. As for the rest of the table tennis world, from halls in Hanoi to grassroots training rooms across Asia, the question is not when our laws will change, but whether we are waiting for the law to change at all. The child holding a bat for the first time today will not remember the name of a statute. They will only remember whether they were safe. An hour on a September evening cannot change a whole sport. But it can change how one club looks at its list of volunteers. And sometimes, the biggest change starts with a webinar nobody wanted to hear.