April 23 Newsletter

England Athletics affiliation?

It’s now the time of year that those runners who have been affiliated with running clubs will be asked for the following year's membership fees.

We have often been asked if Chorley Runners are planning on becoming an affiliated running club.

We took the decision some years ago that the overhead, both financial and administratively, that it wasn’t worth becoming an affiliated club and that we wanted to remain as inclusive as possible by having no membership fee and welcoming anyone who wishes to run with us. By having a membership fee, we felt that it was a potential barrier to participation.

To become an affiliated club, it currently costs £150 per year to pay to England Athletics (EA). It then also costs each athlete £17 fee to EA plus whatever the club adds on to help pay for the club affiliation. So, if we charged everyone £20 we would need 50 paid-up members each year to cover the club fee as well plus the overhead of the level of administration required by EA to manage the club and meet the EA requirements.

At Chorley Runners we can offer nearly as many benefits by staying as a free England Athletics RunTogether club. Chorley Runners benefits from:

• Fully 3rd party insured & qualified UKA run-leaders and coaches, all trained in
  • First Aid, some up to Class C First Aid – Outdoor Sports and incident management
  • DBS checked.
  • Safeguarding trained.
• Support through #RunAndTalk Mental Health champions.
• Free Coaching sessions are run by the club's own UKA coaches.
• Support for our guide runners through EA RunTogether.
• Support from Chorley Runners funds to those who wish to become Run Leaders.
• Club-organised discounts with companies like
  • High5 – 40% club discount
  • Sportshoes.com – club discount and free postage
  • Customised Chorley Runners Event pins
  • Customised Chorley Runners ICE tags
• Benefits available to everyone, are often posted on Facebook or online by the following retailers.
  • Enertor
  • Aftershokz
  • Runderwear
  • Kukri
  • Club Discount at Tobbuts Sports, Bolton
• Regular EA RunTogether monthly newsletters often contain offers on goods and courses if you agree to receive them.
• Free mobile apps for runners to book our sessions and for the leaders to check runners in.
• Access to a free website for the club

We understand that some of you are or wish to become affiliated with clubs, but in addition to the formal running clubs out there, the many "virtual/ online” Affiliated running clubs are often significantly cheaper and just charge £17 or maybe an extra £1 or so.

Some virtual clubs we know are.

• Fylde Coast Runners
• Fordy Runs
• Lonely goat
• Vegan Runners
• Running at 40 plus
• Run Mummy Run

And there are many more out there.

There are some extra benefits for an individual who is affiliated:

• £2 off race entry into several events, but not all. This is potentially useful if you enter more than 9 or 10 events a year that offer the discount.
• The club would have some London marathon places which would be available to the affiliated runners.
• Discount on Run Leader and coaching courses.

While we don't believe the additional overhead of becoming an affiliated club is worth it for our current membership, if there was enough demand, then it may be considered in the future.