Coaches and Officials Licences have now ceased

In the recent meeting of the London Gymnastics Management and Joint Technical Committee the decision was passed to cease the existing scheme of Officials and Coaches needing to hold a London Gymnastics Licence.

The main reasons for this are explained as:

• Time needed to administer the scheme
• A barrier to progression and movement between disciplines
• Cost and time to produce the licence
• Incorrect or out of date information. With the new modular approach to some coaching courses, it becomes increasingly difficult to keep the qualifications of a coach or official up to date. There was a reliance on the individual to update the information and it was deemed this added further time and effort for the individual
• The licence was unable to prove that BG membership or CRB status was current without the BG CRM being checked. Unfortunately due to data protection only British Gymnastics England Staff have access to this level of information, making the Licence Officers role inefficient for checks
• The onus was on London Gymnastics to invest time to check details, when in fact the onus should be on the club, coach or official to ensure their qualification, membership and CRB status is up to date

New Declaration Form

As from 1 August 2010, all competitions will now require the Head Coach for each Club to sign a declaration form. This form will declare the following:

• every member of the Team (coach and gymnast) are paid members of British Gymnastics.
• coaches must hold a valid CRB membership of British Gymnastics.
• coaches who are in control of the gymnasts are qualified to the appropriate skill level of their gymnasts.

The onus is on the Club (via it's coaches) to ensure that that gymnasts in their control meet all of the necessary BGA membership requirements outlined above.

From time to time, London Gymnastics and other third party agencies will check that these rules have been adhered to. Anyone found not to have complied with the membership and qualification rules mentioned above will be asked to leave the competition floor and the matter will be referred to the London Gymnastics Complaints Officer for further investigation.