Posted on 20th March 2020
Throughout the first national lockdown in the spring of 2020 we produced and updated guidance regularly as new government schemes for coping with the shutdown and its associated effects were announced.
Advice for community-owned clubs on COVID-19
It has been a difficult few weeks for everyone in football, with uncertainty over the cancellation of fixtures being replaced with a difficult business climate now that football has ceased.
The FSA is committed to supporting all our members, by providing information and support through the coming months, and as part of that we have pulled together information into the two briefing documents below which will be of particular interest to our community-owned clubs.
Business operations and legal guidance
Over the last two weeks the government has announced a range of measures to support small and medium businesses, and we have collated the relevant information as it may pertain to community-owned clubs.
The link below has been updated to reflect the government’s announcement of making up to 80% of wages available for furloughed employees, and now in its fourth revision (7th May) includes information on self-employment, season planning for 2020/21 and the further details of the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme relating to part-time workers, National Insurance and pension contributions.
You can download the business operations information here
Our second briefing paper has been drafted by our legal partners Gateley – it covers a range of questions clubs may have over the coming weeks and months, including commercial and contractual matters, and HR advice.
You can download the legal guidance notes here.
Other information
Our colleagues at Co-operatives UK have also provided some information which may be helpful to community owned clubs.
We also work closely with Unite the Union, and they have a number of briefing papers on their website here.
Sport England ahve also announced details of grant support available to voluntary and community sports, to aid with running costs for community organisations. Details can be found on the Sport England website here. Please note this is not intended to cover player wages and/or fees.
We have been working with the FA in recent weeks, and understand that they will be producing their own guidance on player regulations. Advice on player contracts should be sought from the FA.
Support
We hope that clubs are in a fortunate enough position to have sufficient resource and advice available to them through existing channels to weather the coming weeks and months, but if not please get in touch with the FSA – email Andy Walsh or Richard Irving – and we’d be happy to help in offering support and advice where we can.
