MESSAGE FOR CLUBS AND COACHES

Yesterday’s decision by the UK government to close schools will have significant impact particularly on our community of self-employed coaches.

In addition to the other recent announcements we recognise that coaches, clubs and event organisers face a period of financial uncertainty. We also know that you will all play a vital role in sustaining our sport and re-starting fencing activities once this period is over.

Over the coming days BF will be looking at how we can support you to do this. We will be reviewing the government announcements, identifying options and signposting you to the latest information available. We will be active in discussions with our stakeholder partners to identify ways that we can better support you.

For those coaches already contracted to work for BF on projects we will be in contact directly to discuss the implications. Where possible our approach will be to identify alternative work that you can help with.

We will be setting up dedicated web pages for clubs and coaches where more specific advice will be posted. These will always be linked to and link back to our main page here which we recommend that you refer to on a regular basis.

You can expect to hear more from us via email next week when we hope to be able to bring you more detailed information.

In the meantime please help us by making sure we can contact you during this time:

1. Check your email details are up to date on our membership platform and we have permission to contact you. You will need to log into the system to check and update this. We are also getting a number of undelivered messages when we send emails, particularly from club contacts. Please ask your club secretary to check and update the club profile if necessary.
2. Sign-up to our newsletters: Club Digest and/or Coach Digest.
3. Follow our social channels: you can find us on Facebook and Twitter where we will be posting updates on a regular basis.

During this time the health and wellbeing of our community is of the utmost importance – please continue to follow the official guidance and look after yourself and each other.