To sign up for NICAS sessions, you’ll need to contact your local accredited centre direct. You can find your nearest accredited centres plus their contact details on our Find a Centre map.
Here are the minimum age limits set by NICAS for our schemes:
- Wild Climbers – age 3
- NICAS Clip – age 6
- NICAS Climbing – age 7
- NICAS Bouldering – age 7
There is no upper age limit but our schemes are aimed primarily at children, young people and young adults; however, our schemes have been successfully used with adults at some centres.
Each accredited centre may set their own higher minimum-age limit for NICAS sessions that they run, based on their operating procedures, risk assessments, insurance requirements and staffing. NICAS respects the unique decision made by each centre, on the advice of their Technical Advisor or Competent Person, regarding their age requirements for NICAS sessions, unsupervised climbing or membership.
Yes – our schemes are designed to be accessible to all. We give each centre’s Course Director leeway to use their own extensive knowledge and experience of climbing, bouldering and teaching to make adaptations to our schemes when appropriate. Our Reasonable Adjustments policy gives guidance to centres on how to adapt our schemes for learners with disabilities or specific needs. If you have any specific question not covered in our policy, please contact us.
You can sign up for NICAS sessions whether you’ve never climbed before or done a few sessions already. Just find your local accredited centre to register your child or for advice on which session will work best for them.
If you think your local wall might be interested in delivering NICAS then please ask them to contact us about becoming accredited. Otherwise, just search our Find a Centre map for your nearest accredited centre.
When you register for NICAS, an online account is created to log your achievements online, and you will also be given a paper logbook to record your progress. If you are doing NICAS Climbing or NICAS Bouldering, your new centre will transfer your online record using your unique candidate code (from your logbook) and you can carry on learning with them.
By its nature, climbing has inherent risks, and part of learning to climb is learning to identify and manage those risks. Falls and slips do happen, but if your child is seriously injured during a NICAS session at an accredited centre, the centre should complete an investigation into what happened and report it under RIDDOR if medical treatment was needed. It may take the wall a couple of weeks to complete their initial investigation and write the necessary first reports, but you can ask them to keep you updated about progress. If the investigation needs to go further (e.g. involving the Health & Safety Executive), this can take longer. If you have questions or concerns, please talk to the wall manager in the first instance. If the incident was during an instructed NICAS session and you still have questions after the investigation is completed, please contact us.
Please refer to our Safeguarding page.
Each accredited centre is required to have a suitable Child Protection policy and conduct DBS checks (or local equivalents) for all relevant staff.
Please send any enquiries regarding safeguarding issues direct to safeguarding@nicas.co.uk