Announcement of BDO's

ANNOUNCEMENT BY SUE SUTTON
NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT DIRECTOR

27 May 2005


Badminton Development Officers  (Click here for list)


At the Council Meeting on 26 May, I made an announcement about Badminton Development Officers, funded through the Whole Sport Plan (WSP).

The process for arriving at these decisions was rigorous. County Sports Partnerships (CSP) all completed a questionnaire, as did every County Badminton Association. I entered all the data from CSPs onto a spreadsheet and made a précis of every return from CBAs and cross-relating the information.

The Regional Development Managers came to the National Badminton Centre and were divided into two groups and independently went through the same process. Only then did we share our outcomes, debate the finer details and settle on the decision.

The Criteria that we considered was:
• The readiness of the CSP
• How badminton was viewed within that partnership, alongside other sports
• What partnership support the CSP was offering in return
• The quality of the information declared by the CBA
• The depth of understanding of development
• The CBAs’ acknowledgement of responsibility for development
• People on board in the CBA to drive programmes forward and who will embrace the needs of BADMINTON England as a priority

The ability and potential for the combination of CSP & CBA to make inroads into achieving the BADMINTON England Key Performance Indicators as agreed within the WSP:

• Increasing participation
• Accrediting clubs to BE Silver Club & Clubmark
• Increasing the number of affiliated clubs & leagues
• Increasing membership
• Increasing the number of active coaches
• Increasing the number of volunteers
• Increasing badminton activity in schools both on the curriculum and as an after-school club
• Increasing the number of links between schools and clubs

The Next Step:
The next step will be to finalise the link with each CSP, settle on the active working relationship and begin the process for advertising the positions. This link will determine the speed and placement of BDOs within a rolling programme.


It is anticipated that over the next few months this picture will become clearer, but that all officers will be operational no later than 1 October. Adverts will be placed locally and also on the BADMINTON England and Sport England websites.

Interview Panel
It is anticipated that the interview panel will consist of:

1. The Regional Development Manager
2. A representative from the CBA
3. A representative from the CSP/LA
4. The National Development Director (where possible)


Your RDM will be contacting you soon to begin moving all this forwards and opening a dialogue.

For those counties, who, in this first year, have been unsuccessful and would like feedback, then please e-mail me at suesutton@badmintonengland.co.uk
For these counties, the opportunity to have a paid 1 day per week BDO, with matched funding from BADMINTON England is still available. Please speak directly to your RDM on this.

I trust that this explanation is clear, but again feel free to contact me or your RDM.