Registration Scheme

Clubs remaining affiliated to England Athletics after 1st April 2007 will pay £50 plus £5 for each club member. Yes that is about a 300% increase on what was paid to the dear old AAA of England which was swept away by the Quango Sport England in the name of modernisation. Well have you noticed any improvement in athletics to justify this mind boggling increase. And the good news folks is that the costs of the new England Athletics are calculated at between £40 and £50 per athlete. As the Government subsidy to your sport is reduced the cost of your club membership will soar.
And yes I nearly forgot to say. As regulation tightens on the amateurs providing your races and competition and the amateurs are driven out. You will only be left with races organised by professional for profit companies and your race entry costs will also soar.And guess who are the membership of the committee set up to manage road running in the UK. Well you guessed the representatives of the professional race organisers.
What can you do? Tell your club to join ABAC now to fight for your sport.

What does the ABAC do ?

ABAC is a not for profit organisation run by volunteers. It was initially formed as a lobby group. It is now aiming to offer an alternative and much cheaper affiliation route for clubs. It can offer ABAC affiliated clubs a comprehensive liability insurance policy. ABAC already has 135 member clubs both road running and track and field.

ABAC insurance cover is £2.50 per member (Included with UKa)
And then there is the £2 per race for being unaffiliated

With those figures £5 doesn't seem that bad to me

I think the point is that as the subsidy for the new governing body is withdrawn over the next 4 years this £5 will have to rise. As the governing body is primarily concerned with elite athletes - most of them not even distance runners or runners at all - what we will have is a situation where local running clubs are subsidising the sport of athletics.

As I've no particular interest in athletics I do object to that - £5 isn't that much - when it inevitably rises to £10, £15 or £20 it becomes a different matter.

If that's wrong then I'd welcome any correction - it's worth discussing though.

The cost of ABAC insurance for the club is £40 plus £1.35 per club member. Races organised by the club for which the club receives an entry fee cost an additional £1 per race entrant.
The future position regarding unattached levies is obscure. It is believed that these may be replaced by a flat levy on all race entrants.

So in effect clubs could run a race under ABAC rules and insurance - are you saying that non ABAC runners would pay the same entry fee as those affiliated or it's not decided yet.

I looked at suggesting my club joined ABAC when a thread appeared on these forums a few months ago. I was particularly drawn to the approach regarding coaching, where experience counts more than qualifications, and the insurance cover offered for races and their volunteer helpers. What put us off at the time were the actual costs of the insurance which weren't immediately obvious from the website.

I do appreciate that the £5 wil rise in time, and probably quite quickly, but if clubs drop out of the UKa fold you will also see an increase in the £2 addition for an unaffiliated entry fee for UKa races(There may be 135 clubs in ABAC at present but I guess that the majority of these are still affiliated to UKa as well). At present if you race only 5 times a year you will immediately be paying a £10 per year subscription to UKa to race in only these events.

For it to be worthwhile I feel that there will need to be an increase in races organised under the ABAC banner (are there any at present and if so which ones ?) and possibly pulling a few of the bigger ones across.

How many people who read these forums race in The London Marathon, The Great North Run
etc . Yes they are organised by professionals and they do cost a lot of money but they are the races that people want and I am sure they will remain in the UKa fold.

I am not pro UKa but just wanted to point out that there is a bit more to this than meets the eye.

Sorry what I should have said is "experience counts as well as qualifications" and not "experience counts more than qualifications". ie someone of experience (sanctioned by the clubs committee) does not need to gain a paper qualification to be insured to coach. With UKa you have to have a qualification to caoch and until you reach level 2 you need to be supervised.

You could run a race under ABAC rules and insurance. There would be no unattached entry levies. The race organiser would need to include the £1 per head for insurance in his entry fee.
No races have yet been organised under the ABAC banner. It was difficult to compete with the free affiliation offered by England Athletics for their first year. ABAC are not interested in insuring the really huge professionaly organised races. They do want to support the small and medium sized club organised races.