The Football Association is the latest NGB to receive its licence from Sport England to accredit clubs. It became part of Clubmark at the end of 2010, adding 3,700 Charter Standard (the FA's own club accreditation brand) clubs to the portfolio. It also brings many more clubs currently ‘working towards'.

Clare MacLeod, KKP Principal Consultant and National Clubmark Manager commented:

"As the NGB for the largest participation sport in England, the FA is committed to ensuring the highest standards of coaching, child protection, health and safety and volunteering. In aligning Charter Standard to Clubmark, it has reinforced its commitment to support active accessible clubs. Ensuring compliance with Clubmark minimum operating standards will assist the FA's drive to increase participation and improve club sustainability".

Clubmark is Sport England's national quality driven universal accreditation scheme for junior sports clubs. Licensed national governing bodies of sport (NGBs) and county sport partnerships (CSPs) are authorised to award Clubmark to clubs that meet set key criteria. Managed by KKP since 2006, it has, over the past five years:

• Met the target to accredit 10,000 clubs by 2012 more than 13 months ahead of schedule. (You can read Sport England's press release about the story here http://www.sportengland.org/about_us/our_news/2012_goal_achieved_as_clubmark.aspx)
• Accredited over 10,600 clubs across more than 50 sports.
• Now licensed (as of May 2011) 35 CSPs and 32 NGBs to accredit clubs.
• Embedded Clubmark as the key requirement for partners looking to reward quality club development. The highest profile of these is the Sainsburys Active Kids scheme which has, to date, seen more than 900 clubs receive over £120,000 worth of equipment.
• Accumulated over one million page views at the Clubmark website.

For more information about Clubmark visit http://www.clubmark.org.uk/
For more information about Sport England visit http://www.sportengland.org/