Sports Officials UK

Sports Officials UK has had a good year of consolidating our position as the spokesperson for sports officiating in many areas.

By the start of the period, we had worked with SkillsActive to produce National Occupational Standards for Sports Officiating at level 2 (seen by most sports as the entry level for officials) and for level 3 (National level).  We would like to go forward and produce National Occupational Standards at level 4, the International level, but to show that this is a worthwhile exercise we need to demonstrate that sports officiating is making use of those already developed.  It should be pointed out that some members have whole-heartedly signed up to these NOS; the Football Association, for instance, has changed its training for new entrants to align completely with the NOS, and British Cycling has also redesigned its officials training in line with them. 

Many other sports are also considering the NOS, and this is being encouraged through another project in which SOUK is involved.  We are represented on Steering Committee for the Diversity of Sports Officials project which is being undertaken by the London Development Agency as a legacy project for the 2012 Olympic Games.  Coachwise Education Ltd has been appointed for the first phase of this to work with several National Governing Bodies to assist them with mapping their training provision to the NOS.  The second phase will commence with the appointment of a body to oversee the provision of bursaries for the development of sports officials within London.

We are also pleased to have worked with the Youth Sports Trust, whose Development of Young Officials project is now well under way, and we are represented on the Professional Development Board, a body which brings together the seven strands of sports professionals where we speak for the Officiating strand.

We have continued to be a member of the CCPR, and this year we also affiliated to the National Association of Sports Officials which is an American organisation with over twenty-five years of experience in this field.

During the year we have held 2 Committee meetings, at Lord’s, the home of the ECB, and at the National Indoor Arena in Birmingham during the All-England Badminton Championships.  We are grateful to our member Associations who have hosted these meetings.  Amongst the tasks we have undertaken has been the revision of the SOUK Constitution to bring it into line with our actual practice; the present version is presented at this meeting for your acceptance, although we are already aware of one situation which we overlooked.  To remain constitutional, we shall have to bring this revision to the next AGM since we have not given sufficient notice of a change to effect it at this meeting.

Our website has been updated recently; we are fortunate to have been able to make use of the expertise of Jim Briggs, who represents the British American Football Referees Association but also is a University lecturer in website design.  We hope to develop the website further and to maintain it as an up-to-date facility.

The potential workload is great enough for us to need an administrator, but in the absence of appropriate funding we are unable to employ a person to undertake this.  I have been attempting to find funding, but none of the statutory agencies have been willing to help.  Sport England do not have a remit to help bodies such as ours (and in any case are not a UK body), UK Sport do not answer letters or e-mails, and approaches to the Sports Minister produce responses from his office which suggest we take “our project” to the lottery funding agencies.  I have pointed out that we are not a “project” but that we are actually doing the work which was supposed to have been initiated by the Sports Council seventeen years ago.  We shall continue to try to find a funding stream, not least because we need to reduce the workload of our Hon. Treasurer, who has undertaken much administrative work on a voluntary basis.  We all owe a debt of gratitude to Pat for all his efforts.

Overall, we have had an active year.  We are becoming recognised more widely as the generic voice of sports officiating, and to ensure we continue to represent you all, we look forward to your continued support.

David Pegg
Chairman