Cancellation

This describes what happens we need to cancel a course, or you cancel your attendance.

We run some courses on a voluntary basis, where we do not charge for our time. Many of these courses will be run through a canoe club. We run other courses on a commercial basis, where we do charge for our time. We try to deal with people fairly and sympathetically in both cases, but the terms below do differ slightly depending on how we are working.

If we cancel a course

Sadly, we do sometimes need to cancel courses. This might happen because:

• We don’t get enough people signed up to make a course viable (hopefully it’s obvious for commercial courses that we need a certain number of attendees to break even, but when we’re running courses on a voluntary basis, there does come a point where it becomes hard to justify the investment of our time and effort too)

• Weather conditions (or forecast conditions) make it nonviable to run a course either safely or to meet the learning objectives.

• Illness / injury to coaches can lead to course cancellation. In rare occasions, we may need to cancel courses due to unavoidable and unexpected professional commitments too.

• Other reasons out of our control

When it’s feasible, we may offer an alternative activity, but this will likely not meet the stated learning objectives for the course.

If we cancel a course, we will let you know as far in advance as possible. You may choose to:

• Join in our proposed alternative activity, if one is offered

• Join a course offered on alternative dates if we are offering other courses / course dates

• Have a full refund of our professional fees for a course offered on a commercial basis

Note that where the cost of a course includes accommodation or other expenses, especially when a course is being run on a voluntary basis, we may not be able to recover these expenses in the event of a late cancellation, and will hence not be able to refund these expenses.

If you cancel your attendance

We know that it’s not always possible for people to attend the courses that they’ve booked on to. If you cancel your attendance on a course, our policy is:

For courses run on a voluntary basis

We will offer your place on the course to other potential participants (e.g. using a waiting list of those who did not get places on the course, or through club communication channels where relevant). If another suitable person is able to take your place, we will refund the course costs. If we cannot fill your place, we will not issue a refund. We encourage you to let as know as soon as possible if you cannot attend to give us a better chance of finding someone to fill your space.

For courses run on a commercial basis

We will provide a full refund of course costs if you let us know you cannot attend within 4 weeks of the course date. There will be no refund if you let us know later than this.