BE Updated Return to play Guidance – 17th May

• Organised group activity for adults can restart with maximum group sizes of 16 (both singles & doubles is allowed). You are able to have more than 16 players in the hall, as long as players are grouped into bubbles of up to 16 (e.g. if you had 20 players attending a session, you could group them into two groups of 10 or a group of 12 and a group of 8 etc – as long as each group does not exceed 16 players). If you have 16 players or less attending a session, everyone can mix in and play together.
• For coaching sessions, the coach is counted as one of the 16 players so it’s a ratio of 1 coach to 15 players (for both adults & juniors). If you have more than one coach at a session you can have more than 15 players, as long as they are grouped into bubbles of no more than 15 (e.g. 1 coach = maximum of 15 players at the session, 2 coaches = maximum of 30 players at the session) – this will also depend on the rules of your facility as some facilities may cap the numbers allowed in their sports halls.
• For recreational/social play (people just booking a court to play with friends), the rule of 6 still applies. The rule of 16 is only for sessions organised by clubs, coaches or No Strings Co-ordinators.

Venues are required to operate a maximum capacity of 100 sq ft per person and guidance takes this into account for playing badminton. However, you should check the capacity with the venue and, if you allow spectators to attend, they count towards and must meet the capacity requirements.

This roughly equates to 8 people per court (so in a 4 court sports hall you could have a maximum of 32 players, grouped into 2 bubbles of 16 – one bubble of 16 across 2 courts and the other bubble of 16 across the other 2 courts).

As with all the other stages of Return to Play, clubs should have a COVID-19 Officer, complete a COVID risk assessment and have a booking system in place for sessions.

For more information, the full guidance and downloadable resources please visit: https://www.badmintonengland.co.uk/return-to-play/