Over recent months we have seen a huge increase in the number of tennis clubs achieving Clubmark accreditation, rising from only 12 clubs in April this year to at the latest count 195! Here are just a handful of those that have worked hard to become accredited...

Thorpe Bay Tennis Club 

Thorpe Bay Tennis Club has become the first tennis club in Essex to have been awarded the Clubmark status. The Lawn Tennis Association is keen for all tennis clubs in the country to try to achieve the Clubmark benchmark.

And the accolade, which is only given to clubs satisfying a range of criteria, has left club chairman Michael Baggs full of praise for those who prepared the application.

"We are very pleased to have attained Clubmark status and to be the first club in the county to do so," said Baggs.

"We realised very early on that we would need advice in preparing our application, so we sought the help of Colin Clay who has guided us through the essential issues from the beginning. "However, we needed more than this, and we couldn't have achieved this award without the efforts of one of our members, namely Alan Williams."

Baggs said Williams put in many hours co-ordinating the project and then collating the information gathered by officers of the Thorpe Bay Gardens club. This covered a range of issues from coaching young players to health and safety matters, to communication with club members and access to the club for the disabled.

But Baggs said the application process had also allowed club chiefs to review their practices.

"One of the unforeseen benefits of going through this exercise was to remind ourselves of what constitutes ‘best practice'," Baggs added. "It opened our eyes to some issues, where perhaps we had not been paying sufficient attention and encouraged us to improve our procedures."

Edgbaston Archery and Lawn Tennis Society 

Edgbaston Archery and Lawn Tennis Society, which lays claim to being the oldest lawn tennis club in the world, has been celebrating this week. The club, which is situated next to Birmingham's Botanical Gardens, has just obtained Sport England's Clubmark accreditation.

Chairman Dr Andy Coney couldn't hide his delight at the achievement and admitted: "The Clubmark criteria are very exacting and it has taken some months to complete the requirements.

"It now signals to parents, players and coaches that the Society offers a safe, well-managed and stimulating environment in which to play tennis.''

The club also drew praise from Mervyn Stone, chairman of the Warwickshire Lawn Tennis Association, who claimed the Society's evidence presentation folder was one of the best he'd ever seen.

You see the full list of accredited Tennis clubs on the Clubmark database