MAJOR changes are afoot at the sports charity Ready Steady Win which backs Herefordshire youngsters in their sporting aspirations.

Business fund manager Jo Jones, who joined Ready Steady Win as its only paid employee in October 2001 and has been the charity's public face ever since, has left her position to return to Leicestershire to work within her family firm, a plumbers' merchants.

This has prompted a review of how the organisation is to proceed in the future.

"Jo has driven Ready Steady Win hard and very well but now we need to look at how Ready Steady Win can be sustained," said Paul Winter, chairman of the organisation's board of directors.

One of the options currently being examined is a link with the Herefordshire Community Foundation, an independent charitable trust based in Hereford.

"The Herefordshire Community Foundation has made fantastic progress in terms of supporting the arts and is now looking at how it might support the environment and sport," said Paul Winter.

"We are talking about how we might work together."

One thing which is certain is that Ready Steady Win will continue.

"We have all put a lot of effort into Ready Steady Win and have supported it financially or in kind," said Winter, who is chief executive of the Leadership Trust, near Ross-on-Wye, where Ready Steady Win is based. "Now we are keen to see how it can grow with the prospect of the Olympics in London in 2012."

6 Pictured, Jo Jones has been on the ball for Herefordshire sport.