Clubs and coaches development in Greater Manchester

What were our objectives?
Greater Manchester County Sports Partnership wanted to coordinate local delivery of UK Athletics’ development initiatives across the county to support the growth of athletics in schools and clubs. Hand in hand with this aim was to develop a skilled workforce to ensure the success of athletics development.

What did we do?
Guided by the goals of UK Athletics, the Greater Manchester Sports Partnership coordinated training for key groups within the athletics world including young leaders, PE teachers and club coaches.

The partnership worked alongside local athletics development groups to create structure and pathways to support PESSCL, and co-ordinated partnership funding applications for Star:track and Clubs:future to support club and coach development.

What were the results?
Local delivery of UK Athletics’ fun to fulfilment role has been achieved through successful workforce improvements, the establishment of new partnership links, new opportunities and new infrastructure. The partnership’s successes have included:

• Over 250 newly qualified officials and 14 UK Athletics Level 1 assistant officials
• Over 100 coaches from Greater Manchester clubs achieving UK Athletics coaching qualifications, levels 1–4
• Actively working with nine specialist sports colleges
• Twelve satellite clubs to be set up at SSCO Schools linked to local clubs
• Working with UK Athletics to identify talented athletes for development squads
• Twelve clubs in seven boroughs received over £3,900 in enhanced funding

“Greater Manchester Sports Partnership has been extremely successful at linking partners and programmes to create an athlete pathway with England Athletics and UK Athletics," says Alison Wyeth, head of development at England Athletics. "As a result they have been able to deliver a strong county squad and quality coaching."