Prime Minister launches new Charter for Sports Governance

As part of today’s international anti-corruption summit hosted in London, the Prime Minister has, unveiled a new charter for sports governance in the UK. The Government has rightly highlighted the generally high standards of governance in our sector in the UK, but is also calling for the industry to go further and faster to ensure that our governance is fit for the future.

Much of the content of today’s charter strongly echoes the Alliance’s own Voluntary Code for Good Governance, as well as our wider work to improve and modernise governance across the sector.

The charter is a precursor to the more thorough unified governance code which we expect to be published in the Autumn. Today’s charter includes nine broad themes, covering a wide range of areas including:

·         Transparency

·         Integrity

·         Financial probity

·         Leadership and decision making

·         Membership

·         Independence of thought

·         Diversity

·         Culture

·         Sport England and UK Sport commitments

Emma Boggis, Chief Executive of the Alliance said:

“There is much to welcome in today’s announcement – not least the acknowledgement of the strong progress made by our members already in raising the standards of governance and a strong focus on the UK’s role in promoting best practice internationally.

The Alliance is committed to working with our members and the wider sector to spread good practice and to ensure that governance is open, fair and transparent and that our sector’s leaders reflect the diversity of our participants and wider society. We were pleased to be able to feed in our views on this charter and particularly welcome the focus on cultural change and for a commitment to a clear and unified approach from UK Sport and Sport England.

Today is a step forward and we now look forward to more detail emerging in the coming months. Of course, the success of the new charter and wider governance code rests on getting that detail right – including making sure requirements are clear and proportionate, that the timescales for change are realistic and that the right support is put in place”.

The Government's statement on today's announcement can be found here.

Today’s Summit also saw the announcement that an 'International Sport Integrity Partnership' will be formed. The focus of the Partnership is very much on collaboration, partnership and ensuring best practice across international sport. The Partnership is expected to include representatives from the world’s largest sporting organisations, including the IOC and IPC, as well as governments and international organisations that have an interest in transparency and good governance. The make up of the Partnership will be finalised in the coming months with the first meeting expected to happen in early 2017.

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