THE TELEGRAPH REPORTS
By Alasdair Reid
Last Updated: 12:36am BST 26/06/2008



One of the most high-profile figures in Scottish club rugby has warned that red tape and bureaucracy are driving volunteers away from the grass roots of the game.


Peter Wright, the former Scotland and Lions prop who is now director of rugby at Glasgow Hawks, said that the time and effort spent on risk assessments and disclosure checks has become a major obstacle to growing rugby across the country.

advertisementSpeaking after addressing a meeting of the Scottish Parliament's Health and Sport Committee at Murrayfield, Wright said: "It's all done for the right reasons, but it does seem that there's more and more being put in front of volunteers. That's not only in rugby, it's the same in all volunteer activities. You can't take kids away now unless there has been a risk assessment done of where you're going and what you're doing."

Wright, who played for Scotland 21 times between 1991 and 1996, added: "It happens in schools too, where they're not doing extra-curricular stuff. Everyone has to go through a child protection check to make sure they don't have any police record. What happens is that parents decide that they just don't want to go through the whole rigmarole of bringing in their passports and bringing in their birth certificates and about five or six other different things."

Wright called for a streamlining of procedures to make it simpler for parents and volunteers to get involved in running the game. He said: "We've gone crazy when it comes to health and safety. It has to come from the Scottish Government. They've got to make it easier to allow volunteers to take part in sport."

Research by the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations last year revealed that more than half of all volunteer bodies considered red tape to be a major concern in their day-to-day running, with around 235,000 hours a week spent on form-filling.

Wright was backed by Colin Thomson, the SRU's head of Community Rugby, who said: "I do feel that if I were a volunteer then I'd think there was too much bureaucracy

This article was posted on 27-Jun-2008, 07:29 by Hugh Barrow.