Irish relevance in British equestrian study

By Michael Slavin

In conjunction with UK Sport, the equivalent of our Irish Sports Council, the British Equestrian Federation has just spent €150,000 on a Deloitte & Touche study on its management structures.

The very critical results it got has deep relevance for our own federation and the long stalled efforts at creating an umbrella body for the sport here.

The British Equestrian Federation, which was founded in 1972, is pretty much a mirror image of our own EFI. It has 12 member bodies ranging from show jumping to dressage to endurance and riding schools.

In recent times, it has come in for a fair bit of criticism and hence with funding from UK Sport, it initiated this "diagnostic review'' of its operations by top survey group Deloitte & Touche. The main findings are somewhat startling and certainly would find an echo in the Irish situation.

In brief these findings are as follows:

• BEF's current structure is insular, fragmented and dogged by slow and inefficient decision making

• The member bodies are fiercely independent, protective of their roles and jobs, etc.

• A central company (umbrella body) should be set up to handle shared services, such as insurance, Internet, membership data and publications

• There is currently a lot of unnecessary duplication

• Boards of both the British Equestrian Federation and the various member bodies should be shrunk to between five and ten members

• A register of interests should be set up to guard against conflicts

• Board members to not always have appropriate skills and experience

• There is no consensus of roles an responsibilities between the BEF and the member bodies. This leads to much mistrust

• Minimum standards for member bodies must be clarified. Any member body that does not co-operate should be downgraded to associate membership

• Too many diverse organisations dilute BEF's focus on equestrian sport. It is recommended that organisations like the Riding Schools Association and British Equestrian Trade Association should be classified as associate members

• BEF represents only 7% of UK riders. There is need to engage with the large unaffiliated sector

• Marketing and PR activities lack central co-ordination. Sometimes organisations are competing against each other for sponsorship, etc.

All of that is fairly strong stuff, and in the now very competitive atmosphere for high performance funding, it would appear that BEF will have to take heed to what its study is telling it.

It might well be that our equestrian organisations would do well to secure a copy of the Deloitte & Touche report and study it carefully.