How to manage and negate the possibility of personal liability?

The Scottish Cartie Association was set up primarily to organise Cairngorm Soapbox Extreme. It is an unincorporated association. As such, the members of the association (essentially the office bearers) were personally liable for any debts or claims. We took out third party and employers liability cover to insure us against any claims arising from the event, and all the competitors were required to sign a waiver to exempt us from any claims made against them or that they might wish to make against us.

I don’t have any experience of forming a limited company. We did consider it, but decided against it on the grounds of cost and admin overhead.

Another option we considered but didn’t try was to require all competitors to have their own third party cover. This is available for a relatively modest amount for single events from, for example, Sportcover Direct. (There are other providers).