Sounds sensible. Is there guidance on what a “session” counts as?
We are using 3 hours or more.
At least four pints
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As @daws1159 says. Sessions might become ‘days’ as someone pointed out that you could smash out 4 sessions in a weekend and in theory only do 2 days a year on average which doesn’t quite sound enough.
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Will this be a rolling 5 year plan (so every year you justify what you have done in the last 5 years) or 5 year review and crack on?
Rolling 5 - so annually WATTOs are required to conduct a currency check of their staff and update the register. At that point they look back 5 years and make an assessment. All this does is provide formal guidance as to what the organisation considers is ‘current’; it doesn’t change the process - that’s been there for years.
Whether that requires any input from individuals each year is debatable and to an extent down to how the WATTOs convince themselves of an individual’s currency - if there is plenty of evidence on SMS that you meet the 20 sessions then I don’t see too much need to check logbooks other than for CPD aspects.
Do all the sessions need to be at your highest qualification (e.g. ML terrain rather than hill and moorland) and leading a group or would personal days count?
Mix of personal and leadership days. You’d need to show some days in the higher environments I guess, but it’s not that specific - deliberately I guess to allow the WATTO to make a judgement.
E.g. if you’d been busy working on your paddling quals and not done much in the mountains in the last year, a pragmatic approach would be to action plan that you get out with another ML and/or do some personal days prior to leading a group.
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How does the 20 sessions over five years work out if I’ve done 50 kayak sessions over five years, but done nothing in the last two years?
I personally would consider my self not current in that scenario.
Yep, and that is down to the WATTO to have a professional conversation about recent experience it if that circumstance occurs, and maybe action plan or provide some CPD opportunities prior to leading groups.
An annual requirement was deliberately not included as it is ‘gold plating’ the industry standard.
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Makes sense. Was just thinking maybe it could be “20 sessions in the last five years with at least 3 sessions in the last 18 months” or something similar?
Gold plating the industry standard - hence why that’s not been done.
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Also worth pointing out that it’s 20 sessions across all of your Quals not 20 sessions per qual.
I would be “on board” with a “session” = a day’s activity where a day = 3 hours.
I have load loads of walking the last 12 months thanks to lockdown. but only put half a dozen or so of those in my logbook as the hour’s bimble around the neighbourhood with my wife on the weekend/escape from WFH i feel doesn’t count.
even when we have taken the long way into town across the fields to me seems a “cheap” way to log a “session” (although talking to the WATTO in the past it would seem plenty put in their log book dog walking) and in reality have only ever logged a session when I have needed to take fluids/food - if i expect to be out long enough i’ll need a drink before i get home (and visiting Greggs in town doesn’t count) that is a session worth logging.
i suppose its much like the F80 - a day is 8 hours, but could be as long as 24, but the VA remains the same. for AT a session is 3 hours or 23 hours, but it is still classed as one day.
Wait what?
So if you just have ML then you need 20 mountain ‘sessions’, but if you’ve got ML, MIAS, SPA and some paddling qual then five of each is fine? Or 10, 10 and 0?
Interesting, I was just wondering that! So someone who has RCI, ML, BCU L2, TCL, only needs to do 5 sessions of each to maintain currency in all, whereas someone who only has RCI needs to do 20 sessions of climbing 
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great minds 
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Pretty much - but it is anticipated that multi-qualified people will have much more than that.
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Well, yeh, I’ve got 4 Winter QMDs and 5 paddling sessions logged this calendar year already…
Rubbing it in again? 
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