Developing a sector-wide regulatory framework

Steve Mitchell

Founder and Director, Sporting People

Rob Young

Lead Consultant, Sporting People

A sector-wide regulatory framework consultation

Following their session at last year’s conference, where they sought delegates’ views about the potential of a national workforce registration scheme, Steve Mitchell Rob Young shared the results of phase one of the consultation regarding a sector-wide regulatory framework.

The consultation has involved more than 50 conversations with organisations across the sport and physical activity sector, cross-sector workshops, advice from 12 leading youth voluntary action groups, engagement with over 2,000 members of the public and almost 700 providers.

One of the biggest challenges for the consultants, said Steve, was determining the common purpose. “We spent a lot of time listening and agreeing, but really it is about making it easier for participants to access and experience sport and physical activity in a safe environment.”

He continued, “If we do not self-regulate, there would appear to be a genuine threat that we will be regulated by somebody else and the consensus is that we do not want that. Surely, we are ready to look at self-regulation properly across the sector. Surely, we can have some of those cross-sport, cross-organisation conversations that have long been talked about, but never really acted upon.”

Consultation key considerations

There is cross sector appetite for the project to proceed and further explore the appropriate combination of interventions to reduce risk and enable parents and participants to effectively understand what a safe environment is as well as to support coaches to be identified as “safe” and competent. However, there are also concerns regarding the appropriateness, proportionality, quality of execution and effectiveness. Many are understandably cautious.

Overall though, there is sufficient weight of opinion across the sector that doing nothing is not an option. On the balance of evidence and what we have heard there is a large consensus for proceeding if:

  • The focus of the project is about the self-regulation of the sport and physical activity workforce in order to make it easier for participants to access and experience sport and physical activity in a safe environment.
    A cross-sector registration scheme is not a standalone solution, but is explored as part of a range of interrelated interventions required to have the desired impact.
  • Any subsequent feasibility work is framed within the findings of this initial scoping exercise, including the principles by which any intervention(s) are developed.
  • Ongoing engagement and co-production with the sector is central to future work.


The feedback from phase one clearly showed that unless the above conditions are adhered to, the sector is not coming on this journey.

Based on the feedback they received, Rob then outlined their recommendations for the second phase of the project after first highlighting the key challenges, which fell into three categories; quality, coverage and awareness.

At the moment, quality is inconsistent, he said. While there is some good practice taking place in relation to regulation, it is not a consistent picture across the sector. This makes it difficult for those outside the industry, such as the health care sector wanting to refer into the sector, who are unsure of the quality they will receive.

The coverage of existing regulation and registration across the whole sector is low when compared to overall participation, said Rob. For example, existing schemes are strongest in mainstream clubs, however, the majority of participation exists outside of these networks. In some sports there are only recommendations in place and not regulation, registration or comprehensive data sets. In addition, current data suggests that the majority of the coaching workforce (who are regularly coaching) is either unregulated or operating under light touch regulation.

The final challenge was awareness. Awareness of safeguarding issues in existing coach regulation or registration schemes is low, both among parents and participants. Parents do not check safeguarding requirements and qualifications because they assume the venue or deployer is doing so. Yet despite this passivity, there are high expectations that safety checks should be the same as for school teachers. However, once young people are engaged in sport a relatively high number of parents have safeguarding concerns.

When it comes to regulating the sector, there is no single thing that will achieve this, said Rob. We need to address the workforce, the employer/deployer/venue and the general public when reducing risk.

The future of the sector-wide regulatory framework

Looking ahead, the next phase of the project should be underpinned by the following principles:

  • Focused aim: Any work undertaken should consider and aim for safer environments.
  • Improving practice: Be based around growing safer environments through best practice rather than catching bad people or “box ticking”.
  • Triangular approach: Recognise the three angles to reducing risk and increasing “safer environments”.
  • Role based: Be based on role and as such have requirements that are proportionate to the level of risk.
  • Ease of understanding and use: End users should be able to easily understand the approach to reducing risk and, where data is available, then it should be easy to check, easy to join and easy to access and interpret.
  • In parallel: Work in parallel with other relevant developing work in and around the sector including coaching standards.
  • Sport and physical activity defined: It is up to the sport or activity to define their sport and physical activity specific requirements around what a competent practitioner is.
  • Additional benefits: Considering what other benefits might be enhanced for user groups.
  • Informative: Publicly available information to help make informed decisions.
  • Additionality: Adding to what already exists.
  • Considered: Scenario-tested to identify potential weakness, openness to misuse and impact on inclusion.
  • Voluntary and proportionate: Must be proportionate to the existing risk and the potential impact on the level of risk.


Commenting on these findings, Rob states: “It’s incredibly clear to us that this is a complex change process and it’s not going to happen overnight.”

Sporting People’s last set of recommendations were based around the question of “how” and related to the following:

  • Project phasing with appropriate gateway reviews.
  • Project governance and leadership (co-production).
  • Project delivery – establish a project delivery team bringing together the right expertise to address the different aspects of the work. This includes project management, digital, regulatory processes, safeguarding expertise, those with knowledge of professional standards, professional membership bodies, marketing, campaigns and behaviour change (for example seatbelt buckle-up, 5 A Day or “see it, say it, sorted).
  • Communications, updates and sector engagement.


Moving forwards – next steps

Sporting People will be coming back to the sector for an open and honest dialogue to understand the scale and nature of workforce risks, the existing approaches to registration and regulation and how effective they are at mitigating workforce risk.

We will then compare this with other sectors and good practice and make recommendations from there.

This will harness the collective wisdom of the sector to help shape what a regulatory framework might look like.