Annual Membership

The Annual Membership process is now open to all clubs to affiliate for the 2017 - 2018 season

Membership

We have moved over to offer a membership package rather than just affiliation for clubs. As time moves on then the benefits we can look to offer direct from ourselves and/or our partners will grow. The main benefit this first year is that as part of your annual sign up, you will buy a level of personal accident insurance for your club. This firstly means that you don’t have to go looking or fill in forms for insurers and then upload a copy as part of your application. We have negotiated a discount on the premium by buying a group policy where all you do is complete your annual application and the insurance is there and included in your membership fee. Clubs can, and depending on your league, might require additional cover which is possible but has to be done separately with Bluefin as they are licensed to sell individual covers – but that additional fee will already have taken into account the discounted price from the group policy.

Mandatory Youth Personal Accident Insurance

Ahead of the 2017/18 season, The FA has made personal accident insurance MANDATORY for all youth football. This brings it in to line with the mandatory personal accident insurance for adults playing football. Membership for the 2016/17 season included a basic level, however The FA have stipulated a higher level of cover is required. This will be included in your membership for 2017/18.

Player Registration

More and more leagues nationally are taking up the Player Registration opportunity through the Whole Game System and something we encourage. It not only provides clubs with a record of their members and contact details, but also a lot of club members have said they never hear from us despite communication we send out. This is an opportunity to allow us to get communications, offers, notices of events out direct to them without filling up the club secretary inboxes. It is hoped that in the not too far distant future, that players will then be able to log in and pay their own fines!!!

Committee Safeguarding Training

In order for a club with youth teams to able to complete membership for the 2017/18 season, the following committee members must have completed the online safeguarding training:

Chairperson, Secretary, Welfare Officer

Details of how to access the course are shown in the document below. It takes approximately 40 minutes to complete, your Club Welfare Officer has been made aware of this training and will be able to support you.

Fees

The fees for membership include, what was your old affiliation fee, the personal accident cover, a continued discounted public liability insurance policy and for the first time a team fee. With rising costs we have unfortunately decided to increase the membership fee but in a way that is fair to clubs and reflects their number of members. An example is a one team club will now pay £5 for their team but they are getting a £12 discount on the personal accident insurance cover and a £7 discount on public liability insurance still. That clearly works out at still a £14 saving for that club.