Following a few enquiries about the proposed changes to the Articles of Association of British Taekwondo at the forthcoming AGM, we thought it would be helpful to set out the background to these changes.

British Taekwondo’s work with Sport England, requires that we are Governance Code for Sport, Tier 3 Compliant – which we are, and is yet another foundation pillar of governance credibility for our organisation and its members. As part of this work, some minor tweaks to our governing articles were needed, particularly around spelling out the roles of directors and the board structure more clearly. This hasn’t changed the fundamental structures of our board.

Whilst doing this work, it also gave us the opportunity to tidy up and update a few other things within the Articles, such as using the correct names of our international federation partners, describing our technical department committee structures better, and to update the language used around membership to correctly reflect the now well-established voting rights and process.

Those with long enough memories will remember that clubs that originally joined British Taekwondo as part of a wider group had fewer rights and only one collective vote, as a group, at AGM’s.

This was changed a number of years ago, where all clubs, that had been a member for a year or more, and with more than 20 members within them would qualify for a vote at an AGM.

This gave more of our members a say, and importantly gave groups of clubs the opportunity to have a much stronger voice should they wish to exercise it and speak with one voice.

This has worked well across the British Taekwondo family for some time now, and more people are involved in governance, technical activity and events than ever!

Nothing within the tweaks to the Articles changes this.

Club groups continue to be part of the beating heart of British Taekwondo and it’s great to see clubs sharing their love of Taekwondo, swapping ideas and technical knowledge, training and learning collectively, and coming together for things like gradings and events as a family.

This is part of the essential lifeblood of what we all do, and we could do with seeing a lot more of this interconnectivity and collaboration across British Taekwondo as it helps raise standards, create positive relationships and bonds us all together locally and nationally.

Hopefully this puts to bed a little bit of misinformation and misunderstanding going around, and we look forward to seeing as many of you as possible at the AGM and World Grand Prix Final in Manchester!

Ian

Ian Leafe

Chief Executive Officer