THE Herefordshire FA have revealed further spending cuts due to a reduction in their central FA Grant.

Chief executive Alan Darfi explained the changes in his bi-monthly Hereford Times update.

He said: “As has been recently reported, the HFA Board made a difficult decision recently in relation to the Boys Development Centre, given confirmation from the FA of ongoing reductions to our FA Grant, due to changes which have impacted all small County FA’s, benefiting larger ones.

“In real terms, these reductions mean that the HFA is receiving £100,000 less than five years ago. Whilst huge strides forward have been made to offset this reduction, with only so much money available, the decision was taken recently to reduce our workforce by 2.4 FTE (full-time equivalent), from July 1, 2024.

“To ensure we continue to deliver an excellent service to our customers, a detailed exercise took place to look at where we could reduce our non-core activities.

“As a County FA, we are driven by the FA to deliver in areas across the whole game, such as the male, female and disability game, coaches, referees, facilities, safeguarding and inclusion.

“As one of the only County FAs in the country to run a Boys Development Centre (BDC) and one of only four to run a Girls Centre, unfortunately this very soon became the obvious first choice.

“Whilst the boys centre breaks-even, this does not factor in the 10 hours minimum a week it takes to run the centre, which we can no longer justify as we work with a reduced team.

“Whilst attempts were made to source another local provider, including Hereford FC, none were able to take on the centre, resulting in the difficult decision to end at the end of the season.

“Thankfully the girls centre is able to continue as the funding position is different, as are the operational requirements.

“Away from this decision, we continue to deliver in all areas, and it was very pleasing recently to receive fantastic reports from external safeguarding assessors the NSPCC and the PGMOL, both of whom have confirmed we lead the way nationally in this important area.

“The Zzoomm cup final programme is coming together nicely, and a range of really well attended activities have recently taken place, including CPD sessions for coaches and a fully-booked refereeing course.

“Away from the pitch, we continue to make progress towards achieving the FA’s Governance Code, a gold standard for sports governance, with a planned compliance date of December this year.

Whilst the BDC decision was a difficult, albeit unavoidable one, business continues as normal across the rest of the organisation, as we approach the end of another positive season!”