The Purple Guide to Health, Safety and Welfare at Music and Other Events[1]
Summary
The Purple Guide is the UK events industry's health, safety and welfare standard, produced by the Events Industry Forum as a subscription-based online publication revised chapter by chapter; the Medical chapter was republished 26 January 2026. Its governing position is explicitly anti-formulaic: the level of medical cover "will depend on both the scale of the event and the activities taking place," is determined by an event's characteristics and risks "rather than by using a 'score sheet' approach," and attendance is described as "only one factor" because "a formulaic approach simply does not work." In place of ratios it supplies a five-tier complexity classification, from Tier 1 (under 500 attendees, often needing no healthcare professional) to Tier 5 (over 10,000, including all mass gatherings, with a clinical lead who "should be a registered doctor, preferably an emergency medicine specialist"), together with a three-step medical needs assessment method.
So what
This is the clearest available counterpoint to US practice: thirteen US states mandate clinicians and four fix numeric physician ratios in 1970s statutes, while the UK standard revised last month deliberately declines to publish any. For planning, the chapter supplies parameters the ratio statutes do not — most music events over six hours peak with 10-20% of the day's patients in a single hour, over 75% of presentations are the most minor type, presentation rates rise markedly beyond six hours, and campers may present at twice the rate of non-campers, so staffing should be sized to the peak hour rather than the daily mean. Two provisions are worth importing into any medical plan: transfer capacity must be additional to on-site cover, and "double-hatting" is rejected, with security and stewards who hold first-aid tickets excluded from medical cover counts.