CAPITAL GAINS

London Football Association, one of the largest county FAs in England, launched its new four-year strategy in November 2024. CEO Paul Bickerton discusses the strategy and how London FA’s facilities plan aims to improve grass pitches, develop multi-use game areas and build 3G facilities to address the growing demand for football in London

Paul Bickerton has spent his entire career in sport. After completing a sport and exercise sciences degree, he worked as a football coach in the US, before returning to the UK to take up a sports development officer role at Hampshire County Council. After four years at the council, he then moved to UK Coaching, where he was involved in developing and implementing coaching policy at a national level, working closely with external partners, such as the DCMS, national governing bodies of sport and the four UK sports councils.

From there, he moved to Badminton England where, during a five year spell, he was responsible for the development of the sport in London, the South East and the East Region. Then, in 2013 he joined Sport England, where he spent five years – three of which as head of partnerships – before being appointed CEO of London FA in August 2018.

The London FA published a new four-year strategy last year, covering the years 2024-28. What were the main drivers behind it and how was it created? It’s the second strategy I’ve overseen while CEO, the first being a five-year plan we launched in 2019 to 2024 – soon after I joined. Creating the first one, back in 2018 and 2019, we implemented a full consultation with the sector, covering everyone from our commercial and professional partners to facility providers, our members – the grassroots and community clubs and leagues – and all of the different bodies we worked with. We wanted to find out what they all thought about the London FA and the role we should play in all of those areas. That’s where the 2019 strategy came from.

As that strategy had only been in place for a few months before COVID-19 hit, a lot of the plans we outlined in it were heavily affected by the pandemic. That’s why quite a bit of what we wanted to do in that first strategy actually ended up being part of the 2024 strategy too. Partly because of the pandemic, but also partly because I think the organisation wasn’t quite ready to deliver externally the way that we thought it was. The one thing we did see during 2019-2024 was healthy growth levels in football across London – which was one of our primary aims for the cycle.

The new strategy, called ‘London For All’, launched in 2024 and has five main aims, ranging from building new facilities and improving opportunities for people to play the sport to tackling bad behaviour both on and off the pitch. Inclusion is a big thing for us and we want to drive women’s and girls football and deliver everyone equal opportunities to play football.

Importantly, the strategy recognises that London FA cannot grow the sport across London alone. We rely on our network of clubs and leagues – and a whole host of other partners – to deliver that growth. We are much stronger when working together and collectively.

Linked to that, in our consultations it also became clear that we had to tackle the perception of the London FA being this slightly old-fashioned governing body that simply sets rules and regulations. We’re a much broader organisation than that.

We do the governing part, of course, but we also do a lot of developmental work, grow the game, add value to it, provide educational opportunities and undertake a lot of inclusion and diversity projects. Increasingly, we also do some commercial work to try and bring more money into the game. So the drivers behind the strategy were a combination of things.

You also recently rebranded – was that part of that process of changing the perception of London FA? In short, yes. The rebrand coincided with the launch of the strategy so, together, they provided a new direction of travel for the organisation. We realised that if our stakeholders saw us as this slightly stuffy governing body, we needed to get the message out that we are fundamentally a very different organisation to that.

Up until last November, we didn’t really have a brand and we were talking differently to different stakeholders. With the rebrand, our aim was to get right to the heart of the type of organization London FA was. We wanted the brand to reflect what do we do and what our values are.

We’re much stronger when working together and collectively

As a result, I see the rebrand as a major shift. It has provided a very different look and feel for the organisation. A good example is our new logo. The old one was based on an ancient City of London one – the type you would see on old blazers. The new, modern one is clean and there’s a clever nod to the River Thames, so we’re still very much all about London.

The reception has been better than I ever thought. I thought it would be more controversial than it has been, but our stakeholders have loved it. And it has worked – it has given us an identity, both internally and externally.

What are the biggest challenges you face at the moment? One of the biggest challenges is also one of our biggest opportunities – the huge growth in the popularity of football at grassroots level. It has been huge, especially in London. The challenge is that we have to operate in a very tight urban environment.

When you get a huge increase in demand, you also get huge pressure on supply. So while we’d much rather have the problem than not, it does mean that we’re struggling in terms of facility space. We also haven’t got enough coaches, referees nor enough volunteers. So there’s enormous pressure on the system.

Nowhere is this challenge more acute than in the women and girls game. For context – there were around 3,000 affiliated female players when I started in 2018. We now have just over 8,000 – so we’ve nearly tripled the number in seven years.

Unfortunately, for the women and girls game, the infrastructure is currently lacking. There aren’t enough leagues, clubs, facilities or coaches.

London FA

With nearly 1,000 affiliated clubs and more than 5600 teams, the London FA is one of the largest County Football Association’s in the country. With around 80,000 registered players, the association equates to a medium-sized NGB.

The rebrand gave us an identity – both internally and externally

The challenge for us is to release some of that pressure. Unlocking more facilities, for example, is right at the heart of that. How do we create more and better facilities, which in turn create more referees, coaches and volunteers.

When it comes to facilities, what is your strategy there? The real challenge with facilities is that we’re in an urban city where space is at premium. There’s a housing shortage, so a lot of the green space you’d want to use to develop football facilities also sees demand from house builders and developers. On the opportunity side, football is one of the few sports to receive significant amounts of government funding to its facility landscape – a lot of which is delivered through the Football Foundation.

What we’ve done is focus on four areas of our plan. The first is in recognition that the majority of football is still played on grass. We want to improve the quality of grass pitches and make them more durable. One of the ways we achieve this is through the Football Foundation’s PitchPower programme, which helps clubs make remedial works that make a really big difference to the playing surfaces. The second is to look at protecting existing playing fields or repurposing sites that might close down.

Then there are two new programmes. One is the Football Foundation’s Play Zone initiative, which helps create multi-use game areas (MUGAs) that are perfect for small-sided football and youth football.

The fourth and probably biggest “plank” of our strategies is to create more full-sized 3G pitches and facilities. They undoubtedly have the biggest impact on local communities in terms of providing football provision and generating supply for activities. Put simply, they’re transformational.

Our plans is to help create 3G sites in strategic locations across London. Once you’ve got a 3G site up and running, you can have fantastic programmes and develop all sorts of things.

So our facilities plan is set into those four key areas – improving natural grass, protecting playing fields, creating playzones and a very big focus on full-size 3G sites.

London for All strategy

The London FA strategy is set out to complement the FA’s own Grassroots Football Strategy for the 2024 – 2028 period and aims to address five core elements:

● Improving playing choice and experience for all by embracing different football formats and providers. This includes the target to develop and grow disability football to over 900 participants, providing 79 new playing opportunity sessions. ● Deliver equal opportunities for women and girls to play by growing female participation to 12,970, including 215 new female casual playing opportunities. ● Build more and improve existing facilities by supporting the development of 9 new 3G pitches and improve the quality of 336 grass pitches. ● Tackle poor behaviour on and off the pitch by delivering high quality and more efficient discipline and safeguarding case management. ● Develop a valued network of volunteers, coaches, and referees by growing our match official pool to 1,444, our volunteer workforce to over 5,800, and our coaching workforce to over 5,360.