A message from our Executive Officer, Andrew Rose-Cook:

I'd like to update you in regards to Northumberland FA’s performance in Quarter 1 (July to September) of season 2021-2022. In line with our commitment to be fully transparent, we feel it is important that the targets agreed in our new strategy in the summer of 2021 are measured and explained to you as we look to drive performance and ensure accountability, one of our agreed organisation values.

Participation – Referees

Refereeing continues to be a focus area – there is a general acceptance that refereeing numbers are declining and this is unfortunately reflected in our KPI data. In the past quarter we have asked those referees who have dropped out of the game why they have done this. There any many assumptions about referee drop out  but it is important to establish the facts. Regrettably, behaviour of players, coaches and spectators is repeatedly being cited as the number one reason for drop out – this can’t be allowed to continue. I wish to make it clear that those misbehaving, abusing or assaulting referees will be dealt with the harshest possible sanctions open to this County FA – enough is enough. Similarly, those clubs/teams showing the best levels of positivity and behaviour will be rewarded for doing so, details of which should become available during quarter two of this season. Our RDO Matt Sowerby, has been working hard to recruit twenty new mentors for new referees coming through our referee courses, this will give every referee a mentor to lean on during those early steps of their careers. Furthermore, we have secured funding from The FA to create a new programme of support initiatives and interventions to support referees – there is no quick fix to this problem, we all must work together starting with the appreciation that referees are a crucial part of the game. Don’t let yourself, your club, your league and your county down by demonstrating poor behaviour which may make a referee consider their position in our sport.

Participation – Players

Despite the challenges of the pandemic, we’re pleased to report that the number of people participating in football have swelled to above our FA agreed target for 2021-2022. Our male participation target is a retain target which means more male players are competing then last season. We expect this number to grow over quarter two as this data does not include university football data which is just becoming available. Our female participation target is an agreed growth target, which has been bettered, therefore again more female players are participating in our great sport. The number of players with a disability is slightly behind where we would want it to be. Importantly we have recently launched our Inclusion Hub sites with three large community clubs with a view to engaging youth players whom have a disability – with a view to growing these participation levels from an early age – the early results have been extremely positive.

Business Development

The last quarter saw the delivery of our Football Expo North East, although we were disappointed with attendance at the event, the feedback from attendees was overwhelmingly positive. As a County FA one of our objectives is to offer a wide range of engaging events all of which makes up a small part of our commercial revenue measure which is almost 50% achieved after only one quarter. We have made a concerted effort to continuously collect your feedback on the services and products offered by Northumberland FA, this has resulted in a +34 Net Promoter Score (which measures customer satisfaction), well above our industry ranked target of +20. Increasingly social media is vital to us to rollout key messages and receive feedback, and we are constantly engaging with more people via these channels. Over the next three quarters we plan to produce more original video content which we have found to be very popular.

Compliance

Our Compliance department under the leadership of Dean Buckle has established internal targets to understand the service levels they are providing to the grassroots game. Whether dealing with discipline misconduct cases or low-level safeguarding poor practice we believe you should expect fairness and efficiency and therefore challenging ourselves to process cases within agreed time limits from the date of complaint is key to this. As you will note the performance in quarter one has been excellent and we hope this becomes standard practice across the rest of the current season.

Culture & Personnel

We want a high performing staff group which adapts and serves the grassroots community, Northumberland FA exists to serve the game in the county, and this is a fact which all of our staff fully appreciate. In return for this commitment the Board wants to create a culture in the organisation where people are happy to come to work – therefore the only target we could set is 100% staff satisfaction. Some of you may think this is not attainable, however, in a small team it is crucial we understand the feelings of the staff and impact any trends or issues which may arise. Furthermore, we track staff working hours as the reduction in our staffing numbers during the summer of 2020 can at times mean increased strain as we are actually looking to deliver more with less resource – as you can see on average staff are going above their working hours to help us try and achieve our collective goals.

Finance

Our ongoing commitment is to have roughly 3% surplus at the end of each financial year, this means every other penny is invested in the grassroots game. Although against our projected end of year target we are showing a substantial surplus, this is in line with our budget projections. Our projected financial performance is in peaks and troughs, with our financial controls in place we must ensure our reported results stay in line with our budget, if the two numbers diverge then early intervention will be implemented.