riding school licence

M

mr_boony

Active Member
Joined
20 February 2009
Messages
30
Visit site
hello I was wondering if anybody knew the answer to the following...

a riding school nearby has up on display their licence certificate which clearly says that they are allowed to keep x number of horses but there are in fact substantially more horses used than the licence allows for. is that a breach of licence? they also are bhs accredited and of the instructors half are not qualified but are teaching clients on their own and not supervised.

they also have stable management classes and when theres no instructor which is quite often a mother with very little horse knowledge will supervise the kids for their lesson surely that cant be right they wouldn't even be covered by insurance as they aren't an employee?! not to mention the fact that the parents are paying for tuition and they clearly will be learning nothing!

does anybody know the rules surrounding this?

thank you
 
I would phone the council. We have many more horses on site than we have on our licence. We have over one hundred on site, but just twenty five of those are on the licence and used in the riding school, the others are liveries and polo ponies.

As for the stable management, that is ridiculous and would worry me. Definitely call the council and raise your concerns. If they are not BHS registered the BHS won't have any power to do anything, so the council is your best bet.
 
Can't comment on BHS requirements but the council ones are mainly around the welfare of the horses. Staff have to be over 16 and 'suitable' (or something on those lines)

Their insurance requirement might be more stringent tho.

Quite common to have more horses on site than on the licence. Liveries, youngsters, retirees etc wouldn't be on the licence.

But saying all that if you have welfare or safety concerns then you should speak to the council.
 
There is no law that means instructors need to be qualified so unqualified instructors teaching without supervision is fine from a legal point of view. My knowledge of riding school licences is limited but I wonder if the number of horses stated could be the number owned by the riding school and the others you see being used are working livery horses or livery clients having lessons on their own horses? I am unsure whether either of those situations would be a breach of the licences. Do you know any of the parents who are paying for stable management tuition? If you do I would tell them what is happening with those sessions when there is no staff. It must be very unsafe if the children are all novices and the supervising mum is too. I would like to know if it was my child in that situation so I could stop sending them there. The BHS accreditation for riding schools is about the standard of teaching so I expect they would be interested to hear about these stable management sessions too.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top