The Ellesmere Titans campaign group of parents whose children’s lives were thrown into chaos by a decision to disaffiliate their club program last year have welcomed the findings of an independent review that slates Swim England’s “unsatisfactory” safeguarding and disciplinary regime and judges it to have failed the sport.

One of the Titans’ chief complaints against SE, that the association refused to reinstate the club without any fair process or apparent evidence, raises central themes of the review: fairness, independence and the need for “Justified and Proportionate Sanctions”.

Penned by the barrister Louis Weston, a sports law specialist, the review calls for an urgent overhaul of regulations and governance processes on safeguarding, disciplinary action and what the imposition of what the author suggests amount to unfair and disproportionate sanctions.

Independent oversight came about as a result of Sport England’s concern after it received a large number of complaints about SE governance procedures.

At a meeting last autumn, Sport England considered cutting the £3 million in annual funding for Swim England (SE) and replacing the national governing body, before opting to review and reform the organisation. The independent review into SE’s handling of complaints considers three case files. Though no individual or party is identified by name, it is clear that the story of the Titans is a key focus of the review.

The independent review does not name specific people or parties but it is clear that many of the events relate to the Titans in the West Midlands and the City of Oxford Swimming Club, some of which have been covered by SOS in previous posts, including this:

The Oxford Experience – A Tale For The True Professionalisation Of The Sport

At City of Oxford, 8 years of success behind it, a new Chair built a combustible environment that led to all five of the professional coaches quitting en masse. This is the tale of an extraordinary chain of events

State Of Swimming +Craig Lord

In his review, Weston is scathing of SE’s handling of cases and complaints in a safeguarding and disciplinary governance regime that Sport England wants Swim England to replace with what Weston calls “a fair, independent, and efficient Safeguarding and Disciplinary process”, which SE “does not provide at present”.

So urgent is the need for reform, writes Weston, that by June SE should have an entirely new safeguarding and disciplinary regime in place, one that keeps management behind a firewall and hands power over to experts in child welfare and sports law.

From his trawl of cases, Weston concludes that the SE system and processes are broken because they:

• Adopt a confusing and inconsistent approach to safeguarding and concerns of child abuse in sport. 
• Do not provide clarity of process for reporting of any concerns. 
• Do not allow for or require investigations of safeguarding concerns that provide for contested hearings. 
• Create unfairness and prevent proper challenge to decisions made in relation
  to safeguarding investigations, outcomes and the sanctions imposed. 
• Grant extraordinary and unjustified powers to the CEO and to the ICPO which are not capable of challenge and/or review. 
• Are perceived to grant to Swim England a power to act without challenge or review. 
• Have allowed for unduly complicated disciplinary processes that generate delay and create unfairness in their application against respondents. 
• Lead to determinations before tribunals that are not adequately legally resourced creating a lack of independence from Swim England.