Diversity Code

We commit to being  Leaders in Football  Diversity, ensuring that we promote and deliver the highest standards across our club, including: 

We commit that our club’s leadership should reflect the diversity of our local community. We will achieve this by: 

• Ensuring that our leadership reflects the local population in terms of gender, ethnicity, disability and all other historically underrepresented communities 
• Ensuring equality of opportunity for all
• Carrying out selection based on merit, whilst seeking to source volunteers from a diverse pool of talent
• Monitoring all protected characteristics, cultural and social backgrounds within our leadership

We commit to ensuring diversity within our volunteer coaching workforce.  We will achieve this by: 

• Supporting individuals from all historically underrepresented groups and across age groups to become the next generation of coaches
• Selecting coaches openly and encouraging people from a diverse range of backgrounds to coach within the club
• Monitoring the diversity of our coaches and working towards them reflecting our player base 

We commit to continuing to strive for the most inclusive club culture. We will achieve this by: 

• Having a ‘Club Equality Policy’ which promotes equality, diversity and inclusion, adopted by all club members / players / officials as a condition of membership annually
• Ensuring all club officials attend The FA’s equality, diversity and inclusion online offerings, refreshing this at appropriate intervals
• Signposting all members to The FA’s equality, diversity and inclusion online training each season
• Ensuring that young people are involved meaningfully in our club (through a youth committee or other suitable mechanism) if our club provides a youth offering or youth teams
• Monitoring our cultural progress through an annual club culture survey with a template provided by The FA

We commit to encouraging the reporting of discrimination. We will achieve this by:

• Distributing information on how to report discrimination to all club members, every season. This will include information on the importance of immediately notifying a match official of any incident that occurs on a match day
• Acknowledging that in some instances, discriminatory abuse or behaviour may be a criminal offence. In these instances, we will be proactive and report this to the Police by calling 101
• Reporting all incidences of discrimination immediately to our local County FA, Kick It Out or The FA

We commit to raising awareness on the topic of equality, diversity and inclusion. We will achieve this by: 

• Using The FA’s Diversity Code resources to promote our support and raise awareness with others
• Making efforts to engage with local media and other local bodies to publicise our commitment to equality, diversity and inclusion
• Supporting The FA and other anti-discrimination body campaigns