All over the county we are very fortunate to have a select band of referee mentors who go out on Saturdays and Sundays to offer critical advice in the development of our young and inexperienced match officials. Working purely on a voluntary basis they observe the game, then debrief the referee immediately after the game before submitting a more formal written appraisal accentuating positives but offering limited developmental advice.

Given that most of our mentors operate on a weekly basis, and often have unsupervised access to referees under eighteen, they meet the threshold of the requirement for an FA/CRC disclosure. This ensures we are only recruiting those suitable to work with young people.

We are therefore asking all leagues and local Referee Associations to carry out an audit of their referee mentor workforce to establish if they have an updated disclosure. For those who do not we can send a link to the online application form and subsequently arrange a meeting for document verification. The current cost of an online application is ten pounds. We believe that given mentors work on a purely voluntary basis that leagues or referee associations/societies should strongly consider subsidising this exercise. We do not envisage there will be many applicants and hence any costs will be minimal.

If you wish to send a list of mentors to either steve.stewart@lancashirefa.com or neil.yates@lancashirefa.com we would be happy to interrogate our database and inform you of those who may need to complete this simple process. We would be grateful if you could please treat this request as a priority given how critical the safeguarding of our young people is to all of us, but also to reinforce the credibility of the mentors.