Unprecedented UK Heatwaves on the Golf Course: Duty of Care, Volenti Non Fit Injuria, and the Controls That Cannot Be Ignored
The summer of 2022 changed something. When temperatures in the UK exceeded 40°C for the first time in recorded history, and Scotland recorded its hottest day ever at 35.1°C, the long-held assumption that extreme heat was someone else's problem — a Mediterranean concern, not a British one — was dismantled in a single afternoon. For golf clubs, this presents a challenge that many have simply not planned for. This article examines what that obligation looks like in practice.
Heat-related illness operates on a spectrum. At the lower end, heat cramps and mild heat exhaustion are unpleasant but recoverable. At the upper end, heat stroke — characterised by a core body temperature above 40°C, confusion, and cessation of sweating — is a life-threatening emergency with a significant mortality rate if not treated immediately.
The population that plays golf is particularly vulnerable. Many golfers are aged 50 and over, and older adults have a diminished ability to regulate body temperature, are more likely to be on medications that affect heat tolerance (including diuretics, beta-blockers, and antihistamines), and may be less attuned to the early warning signs of heat illness. Cardiovascular disease, which becomes more prevalent with age, significantly increases the risk of heat-related cardiac events.
Add to this the physical demands of walking a full eighteen holes — often four to five hours in direct sunlight, carrying or pulling equipment, with limited access to shade or water between holes — and it becomes clear that a golf course during a heatwave is not a benign environment. It is a setting in which a vulnerable population is exposed to sustained physiological stress.
The UK's national weather service projects that heatwaves of the intensity seen in 2022 could occur every three to four years by mid-century under current climate trajectories. Planning for extreme heat is no longer contingent planning — it is core operational risk management.
Golf clubs, as occupiers of land open to visitors, owe a duty of care under the Occupiers' Liability Act 1960 (Scotland) and the Occupiers' Liability Act 1957 (England and Wales). This requires the club to take reasonable steps to ensure that visitors are reasonably safe for the purposes for which they are invited to use the premises.
As employers, clubs also carry obligations under the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 and the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999. Regulation 3 of the Management Regulations requires employers to make a 'suitable and sufficient' assessment of risks to employees and others. Extreme heat, given current climatic trends and the demographic profile of the typical golfer, is plainly a foreseeable risk that must appear in that assessment.
The Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations 1992 apply to indoor workplaces and require that temperature is 'reasonable'. While there is no statutory upper limit for outdoor environments, the general duty under the Health and Safety at Work Act applies regardless: employers must take reasonable steps to protect workers from foreseeable harm. When ambient temperatures reach the levels recorded in recent UK summers, 'doing nothing' is not a reasonable step.
A foreseeable hazard that has not been assessed and controlled is not a neutral position — it is evidence of a failure to manage. The absence of a heat management procedure, in a climate where extreme heat events are now documented and recurring, will not assist a club defending a personal injury claim or an HSE investigation.
One of the most frequently heard phrases in health and safety discussions — and one of the most professionally and legally dangerous — is this: "Surely it's just common sense." It is not. And understanding why it is not is fundamental to building a heat management approach that actually works.
The concept of 'common sense' assumes a shared, universal body of knowledge and judgment that all reasonable people possess equally. In reality, no such thing exists. What presents itself as common sense is almost always the accumulated product of a person's own lived experience, professional background, physical characteristics, upbringing, and exposure to specific environments.
Consider the implications on a golf course during a heatwave. A club manager who grew up playing sport outdoors, who is physically fit, and who feels entirely comfortable at 28°C will have one instinctive read of the situation. A 72-year-old member with undiagnosed hypertension, who takes a diuretic for a heart condition and has never been told that this medication impairs their ability to regulate body temperature, has an entirely different experience of the same afternoon. Neither person is stupid. Neither person is being reckless. Both are filtering a genuinely dangerous situation through their own experiential lens — and both may be catastrophically wrong.
Common sense is always someone else's experience dressed up as universal truth. A club manager cannot assume that a golfer shares their understanding of heat risk, their physical resilience, their awareness of medication interactions, or their familiarity with the signs of heat illness. They almost certainly do not.
This is precisely why written controls, signage, communication, and documented procedures exist. A briefing at the first tee during an amber heat alert is not patronising. It is an acknowledgment that 'obvious' is always relative, and that the club's obligation is to the full spectrum of people on its course, not just those who happen to share the manager's perspective.
The HSE does not accept 'common sense should have prevailed' as a defence. Courts do not accept it either. The law asks what a reasonably competent operator would have done — and a reasonably competent operator does not leave safety-critical information to assumption. They document it, communicate it, and make it visible.
When incidents occur during hot weather, the instinct of some club managers is to invoke the Latin legal principle of volenti non fit injuria — to one who consents, no injury is done. The argument runs: the golfer could see it was hot, they chose to go out, they chose to complete eighteen holes, therefore the club bears no responsibility. This is a significant and legally dangerous misreading of how the principle operates.
For volenti to operate as a complete defence, three conditions must all be satisfied:
It is the third element where golf club defences consistently fail. Courts have confirmed that volenti does not relieve an occupier or employer of their baseline duty to take reasonable precautions. A golfer may willingly play in warm weather and accept that they might feel uncomfortable or tired. They do not — as a matter of law — consent to a club's failure to provide water, fail to communicate heat risk, or neglect to implement controls that any reasonably competent operator would have in place.
In Ratcliff v McConnell [1999], the Court of Appeal confirmed that while volenti can limit liability, it cannot excuse a failure to take basic, reasonable precautions. The duty of care and the principle of volenti operate in parallel — one does not extinguish the other.
Where a golfer has made a genuinely poor personal decision — ignoring clear warnings, declining water, continuing to play despite obvious symptoms — the more appropriate legal mechanism is contributory negligence rather than volenti. Under contributory negligence, the court apportions liability between the parties. A 70/30 or 60/40 split is far more likely in practice than a complete transfer of liability to the claimant. Volenti is a defence of last resort, not a substitute for good management.
The standard required is not perfection — it is reasonableness. The question a court or HSE inspector will ask is whether a competent, well-managed operator would have implemented these controls. In the context of a UK heatwave, the following represent a defensible baseline.
A heatwave does not stop at the clubhouse door. Golf club kitchens — already hot working environments under normal conditions — become genuinely dangerous during sustained periods of high ambient temperature. A commercial kitchen combines radiant heat from ranges, grills, ovens, and fryers with steam, physical activity, and in many older clubhouse buildings, poor ventilation and no air conditioning. During a heatwave, kitchen temperatures can reach 40°C or above, sustained across an entire service period.
Heat stroke in a kitchen environment is an acute emergency. Unlike a golfer on the course who might sit down on a bench, a chef at the pass during a busy service may not recognise their own deteriorating condition until they are in serious difficulty. The social pressure of 'getting through service' is a real factor that supervisors must actively manage.
The Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations 1992 require employers to maintain a reasonable temperature in the workplace. The HSE's guidance on thermal comfort is explicit that where temperatures exceed what is comfortable and safe, employers must take steps. A risk assessment that does not address kitchen heat stress during summer, in a climate where 35°C days are now a documented and recurring feature of UK summers, is not a suitable and sufficient assessment.
Kitchen teams often include young workers under 18 and agency staff who may be unfamiliar with the specific environment and its risks. Young workers are physiologically more vulnerable to heat illness than fit adults, and agency staff may not feel empowered to raise concerns about their welfare. Both groups warrant specific attention in the heat risk assessment, and explicit inclusion in any briefing or monitoring protocol.
A head chef or kitchen manager who observes a team member showing signs of heat stress — dizziness, nausea, confusion, flushed or pale skin, cessation of sweating — and returns them to the line because service is busy, has made a decision that could result in a fatality and a personal liability finding. Service pressure is not a defence. The obligation to act is immediate.
Some clubs proceed on the assumption that if they do not formally set a standard, they cannot be held to one. This is wrong in law and increasingly wrong in practice. The courts and the HSE do not require a written procedure to establish that one was needed. They ask what a reasonably competent operator would have done. If a reasonably competent golf club would have placed water stations on the course during a 30°C day — and it would — then the absence of water stations is evidence of a failure to take reasonable precautions, regardless of whether the club ever wrote a policy.
Under the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007, an organisation can be convicted of corporate homicide where a gross breach of a duty of care by senior management causes a death. While prosecution thresholds are deliberately high, a preventable heat stroke death at an event where no controls were in place and no risk assessment existed would be examined very carefully by both Police Scotland and the Crown Office.
Clubs that cannot demonstrate that adequate controls were in place at the time of a heat-related incident may find their liability insurers taking a harder line on claims settlements. An uninsured or under-insured heat-related injury claim at a large open competition could be financially existential for a smaller club.
The correct response to unprecedented UK heatwaves is neither panic nor indifference. It is a documented, proportionate, and consistently applied set of controls that allows the club to demonstrate it has met its duty of care — while recognising that adult golfers making informed choices do assume a degree of personal risk.
Volenti non fit injuria is a genuine legal principle, but it is a defence of last resort, not a management strategy. A golfer who chooses to play in the heat despite clear warnings, and who has been given water, advised of the risks, and offered the opportunity to withdraw, has assumed a meaningful share of responsibility for their own welfare. A golfer who was given none of those things has not.
The controls that make the difference — water on the course, heat alert signage, a staff briefing, a kitchen rest protocol — are neither expensive nor operationally burdensome. What they are is evidence: evidence that the club took the risk seriously, acted reasonably, and met the standard that the law and common decency require.
ALPS Consultancy works with golf clubs across Scotland and the UK to develop proportionate, audit-ready health and safety documentation — including heat risk assessments and staff welfare procedures.
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