New Membership Year, New Age Groups and New Rules

The 1st April heralds in quite a few changes for the club. As well as it signalling the start of a new membership year for the club, it also sees the new competition age groups for young athletes coming into effect and the new UKA Rules of Competition for the sport coming into force.

The club reached a total number of members for the 2025/26 year of 517 – a new record for the club. Whilst we have sadly seen a number of members not renew this year, we will still start the new year with well over 400 members.

The age groups for young athletes will be made up of under 10s, under 12s, under 14s, under 16s and under 18s. All our members are registered with England Athletics with all athletes from the under 12 age category up to our seniors having to pay the £23 registration fee (we collect this as part of the club membership process and then pay England Athletics on behalf of the member).

Every member has an allocated England Athletics number – it is a 7 figure number that can be found via our membership system. It is important that every member logs in to the EA portal at the start of April, makes sure the details are correct and then agrees to adhere to the EA code of conduct that is relevant to their membership category (athlete, coach, official etc.). The England Athletics portal can be accessed via this link:

https://myathleticsportal.englandathletics.org/Account/Login

UKA Athletics have also published the new Rules of Competition for 2026 – 2028 and they can be accessed via this link:

https://www.uka.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/UKA_RulesForCompetition_1st-April2026_V1.pdf

On behalf of all the trustees and committee members we wish everyone at the club every success for the 2026/27 membership year.