Risk Assessment as required by the The Online Safety Act 2023
prepared by John Candy (Administrator)
1) Material can only be uploaded by registered members of the forum and prospective members are only accepted upon completion and review by an Administrator of an application form which must indicate a genuine interest in model railways (the subject of the forum). There is no automatic registration process so "vetting" cannot be avoided and children are not knowingly accepted. Members provide an email address which is used to convey their membership (login) details and all posts to the forum include the IP of the originator, so are traceable.
2) All material uploaded / posted to the forum message boards is reviewed by a Moderator and will be edited or removed if irrelevant or inappropriate to the intended content of the forum (model railways).
3) Any breach (in the opinion of the Administrators or Moderator) of the forum's standards relating to acceptability of content will result in material being deleted / edited as appropriate and, in serious cases, the member will be suspended from forum membership.
4) Communications between registered members using the forum's internal messaging system cannot be monitored by the Administrators or Moderator but any complaint by a member of offensive/inappropriate content of any such message will be investigated and any breach of the forum rules will result in suspension of the offending member.
5) While children are not knowingly accepted as registered members, they are able to view forum content as "guests" but the vetting of membership applications and monitoring of uploaded content are considered to be adequate safeguards against content which may be considered harmful.