On Thursday 24th September more than 80 NGB and CSP Clubmark lead officers converged at the accredited Broad Street Rugby Club in Coventry to attend this year's Clubmark training day.

In its third year, this annual event that celebrates the success of the Programme is designed to update all licensed organisations on Clubmark developments and share good practice identified throughout the year - not to mention a great opportunity to network.

The day was led by Pete Ackerley, Head of Development at the ECB and Chair of the Clubmark Advisory Group. Items on the morning's programme included keynote presentations from Tennis, Rugby and Boxing on the role Clubmark is playing in their wider club development processes. These were followed by workshop sessions to discuss, amongst other things, implementation of the new equity criteria and the potential to extend the scope of Clubmark to include adult sports clubs.

The focus of the afternoon session was a facilitated discussion on how NGBs and CSPs can work better together. Ideas raised in this session included:

• Having a central location (possibly on the Clubmark website) that contains key information - e.g., detailing CSP contacts for club development and lead officers at NGBs.
• Creating support systems to enable key organisation to come together to discuss club development issues, share ideas for best practice etc. 
• Setting up a club development forum on the Clubmark website so information can be shared, discussion topics can be created and questions can be answered.

All suggestions and points raised will be discussed at the next Clubmark Advisory Group meeting in November and passed to Sport England's NGB team for consideration.

The feedback from the Clubmark Conference was positive with 4 in 5 delegates rating the day as good or excellent. Typical comments made include..

• ...I really enjoyed the conference thought it was a really useful day-thank you!
• ...Finding out that a lot of the things we are doing means we are going in the right direction.
• ...The Conference gave good ideas to think about the skills and learning.
• ...What a great opportunity to meet other NGB and CSP's ...chance to network and identify we are not the only ones with certain problems! 
• ...Whole club dev model by RFU showed how Clubmark fits into wider club development.

As ever there is always area for improvement and we shall take on board any constructive comments made to help improve future events.

View the presentations and workshops from the Conference