What is the Event Safety Committee (ESC)?
The Event Safety Committee (ESC) is a new committee which as of December 2025 is authorised by the Nest Board of Trustees to meet and make decisions relating to event safety ahead of each year’s event.
The ESC will be made up each month of a board member as chair, plus a small number (around 4-5) experienced leads or senior members from within key operational teams (such as DPW, Edge of Chaos, Rangers, Consent, Gate, Child Safeguarding, Welfare). The ESC will meet monthly ahead of each event, from around January to May of each year.
What does the ESC do?
The purpose of the ESC is to consider, evaluate, and plan for any significant and/or complex issues arising in relation to event safety, where needed. This will include review of previous decisions (e.g. attendance with conditions, right of admission refused (ROAR), eviction), and making decisions about any new significant potential concerns being reported. The ESC will also review situations where concerns have been raised about volunteers in lead roles or theme camp leads.
How will it do that?
The ESC will seek to make decisions based on best assessment of both likelihood of risk given the available evidence, and level of risk, in the interests of individual, community and event safety. This will also include consideration of how robust the assessment process has been so far, and also whether there is any evidence to suggest that a reported concern might be malicious. There will also be consideration of if there may be a conflict of interest for a committee member to be involved. If this is the case, that committee member will not be involved and a different committee member will be found.
Wherever possible, any participant being raised to the ESC will be informed of this in advance, and invited to submit their own information and/or response to concerns raised. Any actions taken will seek to be proportionate to any potential risk. The chair will inform any participant discussed at the ESC of the outcome and rationale for any decision made.
What if I don’t agree?
When participants raised to the ESC are notified in advance, one option is to choose that they will not attend Nest this year, in which case the committee will not see any information or discuss them.
When a participant is advised of any decision and rationale, they will also be provided with information about the appeal process. Where an appeal is accepted by the Board as appropriate, the information and decision making process will be reviewed by a sub-group of three further board members, whose decision will be final for that year. The process will be repeated and the decision reviewed next year.
Feedback from those involved in any part of the process, and views from anyone in the wider community about this new process, or the clarity of information here, are also very welcome.
Why is Nest putting this in place?
Civic Responsibility, Consent, and Radical Inclusion are all important principles that this process seeks to uphold, and also balance. We also have responsibilities regarding event safety planning as holders of a public event licence. The Board wanted a process by which decisions could be made in timely and consistent ways, and also that best used the relevant experience of our experienced core volunteers. Learning from recent years, feedback from community members who have engaged in the consent reporting/assessment process, and feedback from event operation volunteers has also been included.
The process will be reviewed by the ESC members and the board, and learning incorporated into ongoing processes and decision making. Any feedback is welcome, and encouraged, please email eventsafety@burningnest.co.uk.