THE “compensation culture” of modern Britain has killed off a children’s barrel-rolling race because insurers refuse to cover it.
Children aged 7 to 14 have been rolling empty beer barrels up a 120-yard hill for 20 years as part of Fayre Week in Topsham, near Exeter, Devon, but this year’s event, due to take place tomorrow, had to be cancelled after insurers declined to cover it.
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Up to 25 children were to have rolled the empty nine or eleven-gallon barrels up the hill. The competitors stopped at two pubs on the way for cups of orange squash.
Organisers said that they were baffled by the ban. Liz Hodges, whose son, Joe, 12, is the reigning barrel-rolling champion, said: “We do not understand. We have never had a claim from the barrel race and nobody has ever been hurt.”
Lucy Skurlock-Jones, managing director of the insurers, Event Insurance Services, said that barrel-rolling was classified as a “dangerous activity . . . If the barrels got away they could hit another child or a member of the public or a car. This event has fallen victim to the compensation culture. Ten years ago, if a child hurt his or her leg or a barrel hit a car people would probably have shrugged it off, but now that would not happen.”