Our Board met on Tuesday 13 September 2022 and set out below are the main discussion points.
The Board held a moment of silence to acknowledge the passing of Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II who was our long-standing Patron.
We launched our Safeguarding Strategy, Building an Ever-Safer Culture, earlier this year. Leadership and Governance are one of its main themes, and make a commitment that the Board will receive regular training to ensure it provides strong leadership in this important area. The Board received training at the meeting which particularly focussed on low-level concerns and how early identification and appropriate management of them about adults is critical to effective safeguarding.
With the FIFA World Cup set to start in Qatar this November, we heard from the England Men’s Senior Head Coach, Gareth Southgate, and Technical Director, John McDermott, on squad preparations ahead of the tournament.
Our RESPECT campaign is the programme of actions to proactively encourage good behaviour by players, managers, coaches and spectators. Where behaviours fall below acceptable standards, we have disciplinary processes in place to issue appropriate sanctions. However, there is a grey area in between where behaviour is undesirable but does not meet the threshold for disciplinary action. For this, we have recently launched the Enough is Enough campaign. Our Director of Football Development, James Kendall, and Head of Business Planning, Participation & Development, Daniel Goodacre, presented to our Board on the range of interventions we will make to set clear behavioural expectations for participants throughout the game.
The Board also continued its discussions on the recommendations arising from the Fan-Led Review of Football Governance. The focus of the discussion was on three main areas: (i) funding from the Premier League down through the pyramid of leagues from the EFL to grassroots; (ii) the issues set out within the Fan-Led Review which resulted in it recommending an Independent Regulator for English football and (iii) the way that funding is distributed from us into the game (The Burns Formula). Each of these are complex areas and it was important to clarify the respective positions of the stakeholders in the game so as to identify how we can progress. Accountability for (i) sits in the first instance with the Premier League; (ii) is being progressed with a licencing model being developed and shared with DCMS; and principles were agreed on (iii) which our Executive team will develop the detail of the proposed approach.
Source: The Football Association