Standards and Risk

This area focuses on organisations meeting and exceeding governance, integrity and financial standards at the heart of their decision-making and operations. There is clarity and ownership of responsibility and accountability, with systems and culture embedded and cascading at all levels to create a safe, well governed and sustainable corporate environment for publicly funded activity to take place. A long-term financial strategy is in place, with effective resilience and plans to increase non-grant income and the financial sustainability of the organisation.

This area includes three main components:

• Governance
• Integrity
• Finance and Risk Management

Highest standards of corporate and sport governance with skilled and cohesive Boards and senior leadership teams, implementing and promoting best governance practice.

The Code for Sports Governance sets out the levels of transparency, diversity and inclusion, accountability and integrity that are required from those organisations who seek – and are in receipt of – UK Government and National Lottery funding from UK Sport and/or Sport England. Whilst the Code is the primary point of reference for many governance considerations, it is hoped that organisations would seek to surpass compliance and to strive for sector (or even world)-leading governance standards and culture throughout their work.

Example indicators:

• Progress against the Code for Sports Governance and any outstanding actions, including from self-assessments, external reviews and relevant assurance processes.
• A clear and comprehensive Annual Governance Statement (with public availability, visibility, accessibility, content).
• Board, committee and executive expertise and skills to lead and govern the organisation, with effective decision-making processes to manage change and risks.
• Inclusive Board culture within the organisation and effective relationship between Board, CEO (or equivalent) and senior leadership team; with UK Sport/Home Country Sports Councils; and with home nation bodies.
• Engagement and capacity of the organisation in relation to governance – from meeting compliance with the Code to driving culture change in how the organisation runs at all levels; appropriate processes and practices for cascading good governance within the organisation and sport.

Systems and knowledge in place to embed and drive the highest standards of personal and organisational conduct.

Integrity is the foundation upon which sport is built, and can be classified as personal, organisational and competitional. Demonstrating conduct that is honest and ethical; providing a safe, fair and inclusive environment; playing by the rules. These are things that help define sport and underpin its value to our society. Integrity is not just an issue for high-performance sport - enhancing integrity must be a whole-sport endeavour. We therefore believe in working in partnership to holistically improve standards in this area.

Example indicators:

• Codes of conduct articulating the expected standards of behaviour from all members of an organisation.
• Visibility and application of frameworks, policies, and processes (published and available) that relate to selection and deselection (including appeals), grievance and disciplinary, data protection, anti-corruption, anti-doping, equality and diversity, safeguarding, complaints, social media use and whistleblowing/protected disclosure.
• Conduct and other integrity standards to be maintained, enhanced, reviewed and actioned through appropriate internal and external assurance programmes, ensuring a safe and trusted environment where people feel able to come forward to raise issues.
• Effective oversight by the Board and Senior Leadership Team.
• Staff capacity and expertise dedicated to addressing and managing integrity and safeguarding issues; approaches to ensuring staff and athlete awareness of key policies is supported with education and training.
• Openness and engagement with UK Sport, Home Country Sports Councils and relevant specialist agencies on these matters.

Systems and knowledge in place to embed and drive the highest standards of financial and risk management.

Sound financial planning and management are amongst the most important foundations of a highly effective organisation. This requires robust financial policies, procedures and controls to be in place, but also extends to more strategic requirements, including long-term financial planning, a reserves policy and commercial and/or income strategy. The Senior Leadership Team and Board must be able to demonstrate their involvement and oversight of the financial management of the organisation.

Risk management is a closely aligned and equally critical area. A risk management plan which is embedded throughout the organisation is essential if risks are to be identified as early as possible and steps taken to mitigate the potential for these to adversely affect the business. The Senior Leadership Team and Board must be able to demonstrate their involvement and regular scrutiny of the risk management plan.

Example finance indicators: 

• The financial policies in place; the extent to which they are comprehensive, up-to-date and operational.
• Regularity of external audits (e.g. annual); the content (e.g. number of control points) and the monitoring of action points by the relevant Finance & Audit Committee; the oversight by the Senior Leadership Team and Board, including their ability to make sound financial decisions.
• The extent to which long-term financial strategies are in place, and how aligned these are to the strategic plan.
• Adequacy and trends of turnover and reserve levels; levels, sources and trends of non-grant income – and whether commercial and earned income strategies exist and their strength.
• The strength of financial management within subsidiary companies and how this is cascaded within the committee structures.
• Partnership working with grant giving bodies; appropriate capacity, training and succession planning are in place for key individuals (paid and voluntary) responsible for financial management within the organisation.

Example risk indicators:

• Whether the risk policy is in place and approved by the Board.
• How clear risk management responsibilities are within the Board structure and whether the Board is accountable for risk management; how regularly risk management plan is considered by Board.
• How well staff and key volunteers understand the purpose and process of risk management.
• Whether risks are identified and mitigated within each team of the organisation and significant risks shared with the Senior Leadership Team.