We welcome U.K. Sport & Sport England’s commitments in response to the Whyte Review. It is positive to see a focus on youth athlete voice and education, as well as efforts to educate coaches and other sporting staff.

It is promising that the recommendations take the long-term and preventative approach to safeguarding and welfare we desperately need.

We are especially pleased to see the commitment to develop a national registration scheme for sports coaches, a recommendation that appeared in our ‘Stamping Out Sexual Violence in Sport’ 2022 Report. The scheme will include what qualifications a coach has completed and their suitability for work. We hope that this scheme will foster collaboration across welfare systems in sport, improve transparency and trust in coaching, and most importantly, prevent cases of abuse.

For many years, our sporting clubs have been calling for increased funding for welfare officers in their sporting communities. We are glad that these voices have been listened to, but hope the proposed funded national network of welfare officers has a long-term plan for continued funding for our future generations. We must go further, and require sports councils to ringfence funding for safeguarding and welfare, including that a reasonable proportionate percentage of their funding is dedicated to implementing robust safeguarding and athlete welfare systems at all levels of the sport. This would ensure a consistent level of protection across sport, so that no matter what sport an athlete chooses, they will have the same high level of support.

It is our desire that the commitments to develop the Code of Sports Governance and the review of safeguarding standards respect calls for a zero-tolerance approach to abuse in sport by implementing lifetime bans for coaches in cases of any form of abuse.