2017-18 will be our 11th season as a Charter Standard (CS) Community Club, following another successful renewal in March. We are the longest established CS club in Hertfordshire and one of the longest established in the UK.

The CS accolade comes from our drive to not just maintain, but to improve standards in the game. All our volunteers, who have regular contact, comply with the legal requirement to have a Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) checks (now called Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) checks). We also aim to have all our coaches attain a minimum coaching qualification of FA Level 1, within one year of volunteering. This qualification includes Safeguarding Children and Emergency First Aid modules, as well as the obvious focus on coaching children in the game to FA standards.

Further to this, we aim to have a minimum 60% of these coaches registered to the associated body, the Licenced Coaches Club.

As a reward for maintaining the Chartership, we are given two full sets of kit for children up to U12. This season, we are allocating both sets of kit to our Futsal teams, as they enter a midweek league structure for the first time.

Furthermore, Chartered Standard status allows us to apply for all manner of grants from the FA, the Football Foundation and other funding bodies. Without it, we would not have been eligible to go into the partnership that has resulted in the Richard Hale 3G development.

click here to read more on the FA website.