Leighton Buzzard Canoe Club achieves Sport England Clubmark, BCU Top Performance Club and BCU Top Community Club Accreditation, signifying that we are a safe, effective, child-friendly sports club.

What is Clubmark?

The Sport England Clubmark – safe, effective, child-friendly – scheme is a new nationally adopted set of standards for enabling national governing bodies of sport (NGBs) and their affiliated clubs to set and meet standards that will lead to better quality sports club provision for children and young people.

The Sport England Clubmark scheme applies across a wide range of sports. It will be promoted nationally to enable parents, carers and young people to quickly recognise a club that is committed to providing a quality experience.

Clubmark factsheet (430 Kb)
Clubmark leaflet (830 Kb)

Nor is it just Sport England and National Governing Bodies that will be supporting this new important quality mark. The Child Protection in Sport Unit and sports coach UK support the scheme and local authorities working through Sport England will be promoting Clubmark at local level.

What is Top Club?

The BCU have worked with Sport England to ensure that the Top Club Scheme not only aligns to the Clubmark criteria but also meets the specific needs of clubs and paddlesport. This means that a club can gain accreditation for both schemes at the same time. For further details of the Top Club Criteria click here

Types of Top Club

Top Community Club (TCC) – the aims of a which are to provide young people with a good introduction to paddlesport and consolidation of technique; to give them the opportunity to participate on a regular basis, and to give access to progressive quality coaching programmes where they can experience at least two disciplines of paddlesport.

Top Performance Club (TPC) – the aims of a TPC is to develop and prepare paddlers for high level performance such as national and international competition or events. These clubs should operate an “open squad” system allowing young people to access quality coaching and competition/event.

What are the benefits of being a Top Club?

The most important reason that clubs state for being a Top Club is always – public recognition. This in itself brings many benefits – there are also benefits from clubs working towards accreditation – working to develop their club – they all add up to:

- Additional support from our Paddlesport Development Officers (PDO’s) or local sport development officers
- Support to attend workshops and coaching courses
- Resources to support the process
- Become a member of the Sport England Volunteer Investment Programme which gives access to materials and specialist support to help your work with volunteers

In addition each club that gains accreditation will:

- Be more attractive to new members – thus ensuring the future of the club
- Be promoted in your local community and on a national data base