Safety Planning Guidelines for Events
Events such as outdoor concerts, sports matches and festivals provide important social and economic highlights for many communities. For larger scale events such as an international forum or sports gathering they can also provide profile raising and significant economic input for a region or nation. Events should be fun for those involved, as well as provide safe environments. The public has an expectation and a right to be safe at all public and private events and those holding such events have a responsibility to be able to guarantee to their attendees the safest environment practicable.

Managing all events, particularly those where large numbers of people are expected, or international delegations are to be hosted, requires planning. Interagency cooperation and liaison is essential to ensure the success of any plans in place at an event. Planning must take place well prior to the event and should include all agencies that are involved in, or may be called on to respond in, the case of an emergency.

This document is intended to provide a guideline to meeting the requirements and expectations of the various agencies that are involved in event organisation at local, regional and national level. The guideline is a statement of good practice and has been developed by the Ministry of Civil Defence & Emergency Management, in conjunction with NZ Police, NZ Fire Service, St John Ambulance and Local Government representatives' input.

Safety Planning Guidelines for Events (pdf 900kB)

A set of forms that support the guidelines are also available:
Safety Planning Guidelines for Events: Forms (pdf 900kB) and;
Safety Planning Guidelines for Events: Forms (doc 500kB) for amendment as neccessary by users.

Detailed information regarding risk management planning for all Sport and Recreation events is available from the Sport and Recreation New Zealand website. This should be used in conjunction with the Standards New Zealand publication SNZ HB8669:2004 'Guidelines for Risk Management in Sport and Recreation' which can be downloaded from the Standards New Zealand website.

If you would like more information on the guidelines, their development or use, please email CDEMdevelopment@dia.govt.nz