The FA Charter Standard is awarded to football clubs that are proven to be well run, sustainable and importantly place child protection, quality coaching and safety paramount.

FA Charter Standard Clubs all feature a trained Welfare Officer, CR-checked volunteers, Emergency Aid-trained volunteers linked to each team, Respect programme sign-up, a Level One coach for each youth team, appropriate club administration in place and a volunteer co-ordinator.

Secretary Andy Crisp said "Achieving the FA Charter Standard has been one of the Clubs main ambitions for the past few years and we’re delighted this has now been achieved. For a club as big as Broadbridge Heath with 15 teams (5 adult and 10 junior) it’s been a very long process, from the outset we decided we wanted each team senior and junior to meet the minimum requirements of having at least one person per team with FA Level One coaching, all managers and coaches to have a CR-check, Safeguarding Children training and training on Emergency Aid".

He added "This has meant training for 30+ managers and coaches and the playing field (excuse the pun) is never stable because managers and coaches leave every year when their team finish at U16s or sometimes when they’ve just had enough and new managers and coaches join each year at U7s and other age groups. Safeguarding Children training, CR-checks and FA Emergency Aid training also have to be updated every 3 years so this is a continual process".