county Sports Partnerships

[grimsby archer]

My GNAS newletter just arrived. One paragraph trumpets the "success" of county sports partnerships in particular, sportessex "providing access" to funding of £600 for coach training.
I wondered if anyone had any real experience of County Sports Partnerships.

My own experience is two fold:

Lincolnshire Sports Partnership are a "not for profit" company. You (club or county organisation, obviously in our case lincolnshire county archery society) pay them £100 per year to be members. They will "assist" you with lottery funding bids for an additional fee of £250 a time, lottery funding that it is quite possible to gain without their "help". I know, I've done it, several times, for lincolnshire and others.

HumberSports (yes the dregs of humberside still live on in so many local government circles. Humberside hasnt existed for many years now, but we still have humberside police, ambulance and they keep creating new ones like the county sports partnership without a county - sorry got a bit off track there)
Humbersports are a free organisation but only support sportenglands priority sports (yes you guessed it, archery isnt one of them) After several emails to humbersports asking what they could do for us (grimsby archers) I finally got a terse reply saying "contact your local council sport development department"

The newsletter refers to clubs going for gnas clubmark. One of the requirements for gaining gnasclubmark is a connection with your county sports partnership. Tough if your CSP either charges you a small fortune or worse, just arent interested!

On the subject of clubmark, is it really worth the hoops that clubs (mostly the coaches) have to jump through? We are working towards it, but I keep wondering if it is really worth the hassle. Development plans, codes of conduct, policies, courses on first aid, equity, not to mention the cost of the courses in time and mony, all to get a "special listing on the gnas website"

The original idea of clubmark was a national mark of quality. One standard so that little Timmy's mum and dad would know what tl look for as a mark of a quality, safe club when little Timmy wants to learn archery or badminton or any other sport. In reality, most sports have their own versions. GNAS club mark is different to other sports versions. Most sports dont even call it "clubmark"

Sorry, a bit off track again

CSPs anyone?