Affiliation

Club Affiliation 2023/24

The new affiliation model

The Football Association (FA) have remodelled the Club Affiliation Process to provide a simpler, more consistent model for football clubs across England. These changes are effective from 5th June 2023.

QUICK LINKS

- Affiliation Calculator - Point 7

- Affiliation Support Fund Application - Point 8 

- Enrol on the Safeguarding Children Course - Point 10

- ‘What’s New Overview Article – Point 11

- Affiliation Requirements Article – Point 11

- Affiliation FAQs – Point 11

1. WHY DO FOOTBALL CLUBS AFFILIATE TO WEST RIDING FA?

Affiliation is a national requirement for all football clubs. Clubs affiliate to their local County FA. Affiliation is an annual validation of your club, teams, and officials, ensuring everyone playing affiliated football is meeting a minimum set of requirements to ensure all participants are playing in a safe environment. 

To participate in a FA or County FA sanctioned league and/or competition your teams must be affiliated. 

2. KEY CHANGES TO THE AFFILIATION PROCESS 

Club Affiliation will be processed through the Club Portal in the ‘Teams’ tab- the same portal used for Player Registration and Club Accreditation. 
A Club fee is no longer applicable. Only a fee per team will be charged*.
County FAs are responsible for setting team fees across age groups and categories of football (i.e Futsal, Walking Football, Step 1-6 etc).
The new system does not have the functionality to allow County FAs to apply discounts on a club-by-club basis. 

*Club Fee: A club fee is a price charged per football club irrespective of how many teams the club has 
 Team Fee: A team fee is a price charged for each individual team in the club

3. WHY HAS THE SYSTEM CHANGED? 

In Whole Game System, a club could not complete their affiliation until every team within the club was compliant with regulations. Moving to affiliation by team means that when a team is ready, they can affiliate at the touch of a button. For example, if you’re a club with a first team in the National League System as well as having youth teams & disability provision, you can affiliate the first team for their earlier start and complete the youth teams when they’re ready.

Each team will have an ‘Affiliation Status’ rather than an affiliation number. This Affiliation Status will be visible in the Club Portal to the club, in Competition Portal for leagues, and the County FA will see the details in the County Portal. This gives all cohorts who need to view whether a team is affiliated an easy way to do so, in their own environments. This approach has many benefits as previously the affiliation number indicated if the club had been affiliated but did not however inform the competitions how many teams, nor whether all those teams were affiliated. This allows a far more flexible, live, view of all teams participating in competitions across the County and removes the opportunity for non-affiliated teams competing under a club affiliation number.

4. OUR GUIDING PRINCIPLES 

These principles were applied when determining team fees for each category of football:

Team fees should be proportionate to the level at which team competes – i.e teams competing in the National League System (NLS), EFL and Premier League should pay more than non-NLS league teams (i.e grassroots teams).   
Team fees should be proportionate to the age group of players (youth and open age) 
Team fees should be proportionate to the number of registered players required to field a team at each age group and format – I.e teams playing 5v5,7v7,9v9 should pay less than teams playing 11v11. The rationale being that 11v11 teams require more registered players to field a team. 
Income generated from affiliation fees in the ‘new affiliation model’ should be comparative to that derived via the ‘old affiliation model’. 

5. COMPARISON BETWEEN THE OLD AFFILIATION MODEL (2022-23) AND THE NEW MODEL (2023-24) 

The tables below show the fees applicable to clubs in the old model compared to the new model. 

OLD AFFILIATION MODEL (2022-23)

Clubs incur the club fee applicable to their highest participating team.

Category  Club fee  Team fee 
Youth (U7-18)  £15  £5 
Open Age (U19+)  £35  £5 
Regional Feeder League (Step 7)  £45  £5 
NLS Steps 1-6  £65  £5 

NEW AFFILIATION MODEL (2023-24)

Clubs incur the team fee applicable to the category of team. 

Team category  Club fee  Team fee 
Youth - U5-U18  £0  £6 

Open age - non NLS. Includes:

Women's Tier 3-6

Regional Feeder Teams

£0
£25 
Open Age - Step 6  £0
£65 
Open Age - Step 5  £0
£70 
Open Age - Step 4  £0
£75 
Open Age - Step 3  £0
£80 
Open Age - Step 2  £0
£85 
Open Age - Step 1  £0
£90 
Disability/Futsal/Walking Football (Adult/Youth)  £0
£6 

6. THE IMPACT OF CHANGE ACROSS OUR 728 CLUBS 

We have historically retained a low club fee in comparison to other County FAs in the north. The requirement to remove fixed club fees in the new model results in a varied impact on the NET affiliation fees applicable to our 728 clubs. 

Category  Number of clubs 
A - Clubs making a saving on the NET cost  416 (57%)
B - Clubs seeing no change in NET cost  7 (1%)
C - Clubs having an increased NET cost below £20  191 (26%)
D - Clubs having an increased NET cost above £20  114 (16%)

Total number of clubs: 728. 

7. WHICH CATEGORY DOES YOUR CLUB FALL INTO? 

Clubs can quickly check the impact of the changes using the Affiliation Fee Comparison Calculator. The calculator can be accessed via this link.

Below is an example of old model v new model:

Category of teams  Number of teams  Old team fees  New team fees 
Youth - U5-U18   14  £5  £6
Open Age - Non NLS   1  £5  £25
   Total team fees payable  £75  £109
   Club fee  £35  £0
   Total fees payable  £110  £109

8. AFFILIATION FEES SUPPORT FUND

We have established an ‘Affiliation Fee Support Fund’. The fund is discretionary and available to clubs to help offset some of the cost of affiliation in year 1 (Season 2023-24).  

Circumstances in which you may be eligible for a grant:

Affiliation fees payable in season 2023-24 (new model) are £20 or more than those paid in season 2022-23 (old model).
A grant payment via the fund will only be made when an invoice for affiliation fees has been generated on the portal. 
Clubs must apply before September 1st 2023.
Clubs can only apply once. 
Club’s must provide a copy of the latest income and expenditure account 

Eligible clubs can apply to the fund here

9. INSURANCE FEES 

We are pleased to confirm that we have been able to retain the insurance premiums at the same level as the current season. 

Public Liability Insurance 
All affiliated clubs  £17 per club 
Personal Accident Insurance - Open Age 
Open Age - option 1   £55 per team
Open Age - option 2   £100 per team
Open Age - option 3   £140 per team
Open Age - option 4   £170 per team
Personal Accident Insurance - Youth 
U7-U18  £15 per team 

We have also negotiated a 40% discount for our Open Age Disability and Walking Football teams.

Disability and Walking Football 
All eligible teams  £33 per team 

Details can be found here

10. MINIMUM SAFEGUARDING REQUIREMENTS FOR SEASON 2023-24

To affiliate, all Youth Teams Coaches (Lead and Assistant) must possess the Safeguarding Children Workshop Qualification. To assist coaches in meeting this requirement, The FA have reduced the cost of the course by 50% to £15 between 1st May -31st July 2023. Coaches can enrol on the course via England Football Learning site

To obtain the discount, follow these steps: 

1. Obtain a voucher code form your Club Welfare Officer 
2. Log into the site 
3. Click ‘sign in to start the course’ 
4. Enter the voucher code 
5. Take the course 

Disclosure & Barring Service (DBS)

In this section you will find details on the following;

- Adding your GBG PIN to WGS
- Initiating a DBS through Whole Game System
- Completing DBS Initiation - Applicant

CLICK HERE TO LEARN HOW 

11. TRAINING AND SUPPORT 

We have co created a few articles and assets to help communicate the changes:

‘What’s New Overview Article – CLICK HERE
Affiliation Requirements Article – CLICK HERE
Affiliation FAQs – CLICK HERE

12. What can clubs do before the affiliation window opens on June 5th? 

Essentially Affiliation is the validation of data that already exists in the Club Portal. You can start to make sure that the data in the Portal is correct and up to date. You can CLICK HERE to view how to tidy up your data.