KKP's pilot project, on behalf of Sport England and the ‘team BEDS&LUTON' county sports partnership has enabled the CSP and its partner organisations to gather, access and display detailed information on all types of sports clubs in the area.

Working with "IT Solutions" specialist Cantarus , KKP's team, led by Principal Consultant, Pete Millward, developed an interactive resource to map the location of sports clubs for children and young people alongside that of schools and facilities.

(Image: SCAMP)The backbone of this web-friendly resource, is a combination of various different databases to remove duplicates and records for clubs that no longer exist. This resulted in a reduction from an initial 10,000 records to a final dataset of around 2,000. Each club was contacted (via a mix of e-mails, letters and telephone calls) to generate detail to create an accurate database incorporating core detail including club name, location, sport and Clubmark accreditation status.

The final system, which goes under the acronym SCAMP (Sports Clubs and Activities Mapping Programme) is extremely flexible. It allows users to start searches from various different starting points and it is, for example, possible to find:

• Clubs within 3 miles of a local school in more than 70 different sports;
• The contact and location details for each club;
• How many people and at what ages and levels, the club caters for members;
• Whether or not the club is accredited.

The system is particularly friendly as it also automatically produces a map showing clubs and can provide directions to the club from your own postcode/address. It also provides links to a range of other useful websites, such as Sport England, Active Places and the National Clubmark database.

Clubmark status is a particularly important feature because it identifies and signposts the resource user (parent, teacher, child, youth worker etc.) to active, accessible and accredited junior clubs that provide safe and effective opportunities to participate in sport.

KKP currently manages Clubmark on behalf of Sport England and is particularly pleased to have had the opportunity to deliver this associated pilot. Clare MacLeod, Principal Consultant at KKP and National Clubmark Manager said,

 "One of Clubmark's key priorities is to raise awareness of the scheme and accredited clubs among practitioners from all parts of the sector from local authority sports development staff to PDMs and teachers. This system not only helps to do this, it also assist people throughout the sector to direct children and young people to quality accredited clubs."

Although the system has been developed as an in-house pilot it has been designed with a view, technically and conceptually, to its being rolled out at national level. The development software is appropriate for full web-enablement and has the potential to be a publicly accessed facility.