With the middle of September marking five months since I transitioned to full-time work with Paddle Scotland, I am eager to provide an update to our members on the progress that has been made, some of the challenges faced and what you can expect to see over the coming months.

The short version is this: these first five months have been very much dedicated to internal change, with an initial focus on stabilising and resetting the organisation. Much progress has been made - and more is required.

While I appreciate our members may not have seen significant change yet, the coming months should see us be much more visible in this respect. There have been some challenges that have not allowed us to move as fast as we would like, but challenges always provide the opportunity to learn and develop.

I have really appreciated the positive reception and understanding I’ve had to date. The patience and support shown by the community and membership is really appreciated.

I hope the summary below provides some assurances that positive change is happening, albeit quietly, and gives you an indication of more to come.

Yours sincerely,

Kevin Pringle

Paddle Scotland Interim CEO

Progress Update

Governance Review Implementation

Early this year, we commissioned Sustainable Sport to undertake a review of Paddle Scotland’s governance arrangements against the recommended practice from UK Sport and sportscotland. This review produced 30 recommendations of which 14 have been completed and 13 are in progress.

This has included: 

• Agreeing and issuing updated director role descriptions and letters of appointment for all directors ensuring directors' responsibilities and expectations are clear. 
• Approving a schedule of delegation to provide clarity on the decision-making responsibilities of the Board and senior staff within the organisation. 
• Undertaking an updated Board skills assessment to identify strengths and skills gaps with a view to further Board recruitment.   
• Updating the Board conflict of interest register to ensure any conflicts are declared and handled appropriately.
• Completing a risk appetite review and establishing a new strategic risk register to ensure risks are highlighted early and mitigated where possible.
• Establishing a decision and action log for the Board to ensure all decisions are appropriately logged and actions are followed through.
• Updating our policy tracker for all policies and procedures we currently have in place; we will work through reviewing these in priority order.
• Finalising agreement of an updated 'UK Agreement' covering our relationship with Paddle UK and the other Home Nations.
• Appointing a director to the Paddle UK Board to support strategic communication between Paddle UK and Paddle Scotland.
• Appointing a Board Anti-Doping lead.
• Reviewing the insurances that Paddle Scotland has in place to ensure those are appropriate. 
• Initiating Board skills development with an informal discussion session with Governance expert David Watt.

Retrospective Governance Review 

Following the significant staffing changes and some member concerns over governance at the end of 2024, Paddle Scotland instructed the legal firm Harper Macleod to undertake a retrospective review of the organisation's governance and leadership, and to report their findings, recommendations and learnings. 

While this review found the decision-making process of the Board to be appropriate, it highlighted areas for learning and improvement in governance – a number of which were already captured in the forward-looking Governance Review noted above. 

It is clear that robust systems and strong leadership is required to ensure that Paddle Scotland is a successful and sustainable organisation. The Board have reflected upon the report and recommendations and are committed to and focussed on implementing the learning from the report.

Strategic Direction 

We have been working with the staff and Board to develop a high-level strategic direction for consultation with our members. It has been pleasing that there has been good alignment between staff and Board about where the organisation should focus. 

The strategy is likely to take a phased approach - with a 'back to basics' focus initially, working to ensure we get the little things that are important to the membership right and building from there.

Over the coming weeks, further information will be shared with members for input and consideration, along with opportunities to feedback in person. We’re excited to gain further insight from the paddling community. 

Review of Staffing Structure

We have begun a review of the staffing structure, working to get clarity of roles and responsibilities across the organisation. It is clear to me that we are lucky to have some very talented and dedicated people who care about the paddling community. I believe with some clarity of direction, along with additional capacity, we have the core of a staff team that can move the organisation forward. That said, we do need to bring in additional capacity.

We will move into recruitment quickly for some initial posts, while taking a phased approach to change across the wider organisation. The initial focus will be in our Operations Team and will focus on customer service, communications and Safeguarding. 

Delivery Centre Audit

In order for Paddle Scotland to retain its status as a delivery centre for British Canoeing Awarding Body (BCAB) qualifications, we must ensure compliance with qualification standards. In June, we successfully completed our detailed audit with positive feedback from BCAB thanks to much hard work by the staff team. 

Financial Systems

We’ve updated a number of our financial systems, and this work will continue over the next three months. This is an important step for the organisation as we modernise how we operate, improve our financial reporting and reduce workload on staff through automation.

sportscotland Relationship 

We’ve been working to ensure sportscotland, our major investor, has confidence in Paddle Scotland through this period of change. sportscotland have helpfully given us space to set our own path while being responsive to requests for support. We continue to update them regularly on progress and challenges and appreciate their ongoing support. 

Standards for Deployment - Club Guidance & Support

The team have been reviewing our guidance to clubs to ensure that this is as clear and as easy to understand and implement as possible. 

We have extended our commitment to support clubs through the training requirements with fully subsidised access to eLearning courses and subsidised support for training through the rest of this year. We are continuing to look at ways to increase the advice and support available to clubs to assist safe decision making.

Paddle UK have also recently made us aware of some updates to the Standards. While they remain broadly the same, clubs who do not currently have a Standard Operating Procedure will be asked to develop this over the coming months. We are reviewing how Paddle Scotland can support clubs with this and we’ll communicate with clubs in due course. 

Secondly, a Safety Officer Induction will replace the Event Safety training requirement. Further information will be provided on this, but this appears to be a positive change for clubs, with the new Induction being more appropriate for club needs around safety.

Talent Pathway Engagement – Slalom and Sprint

We have initiated conversations in relation to the athlete pathway in the Olympic disciplines with a view to better aligning the Paddle Scotland performance programme with club and development activity. It is clear this is a complex picture and we will look to follow up the positive engagement over the next month. 

Challenges & Frustrations

The organisation has faced and will continue to face a number of challenges. In the main, these are down to capacity.

Capacity

Given our current level of resources, unfortunately it’s simply not possible to do everything the organisation would like to - which leads to difficult decisions on prioritisation. There is ongoing work to make some of our systems more efficient, which will help, but we will have to continue to make decisions on priorities. These decisions need to be guided by a clear strategy - with input from the community - and support from the membership.

Safeguarding, Complaints and Subject Access Requests

Our team is dealing with a small number of complex safeguarding cases, complaints and subject access requests. While this is not abnormal for a Governing Body, it has added to our workload significantly. Each of these must be addressed, but by their nature, they often arise 'unplanned' and take time away from other work.

Standards for Deployment

We are aware of the pressure this is putting on the community. As mentioned above, we are working to adjust, learn and support as best we can in this area. We are always open to discussing this with clubs and have a range of support we can provide.

Membership System

While there are aspects of our JustGo membership system that work very well for our sport, there are, as with most systems, ongoing challenges. These often cause frustration for members, can create additional workload for the staff team and again, arise unplanned. We are committed to reviewing our membership system over the next 18 months to ensure it is fit for purpose, but any change will take some time, so please be patient with us and the system! 

What’s Coming Next

You can expect to see further change over the coming weeks and months – below is a flavour of what to expect:

1. Board and Chair Recruitment: Having completed the Board skills review, we will be advertising for new Appointed Board members to fill certain skills gaps, along with the recruitment of a permanent Chair. Further information will follow soon on this.
2. Operations Team Recruitment: As mentioned above - we’re going to move into staff recruitment to strengthen the team in key areas. 
3. Permanent CEO Recruitment: As the Chair recruitment progresses, we’ll also move to recruit a permanent CEO, with the aim of having the newly-appointed Chair involved in the recruitment process. This is clearly a key appointment for the organisation as it moves forward. 
4. Regional Development Roadshows: Our Development team, along with senior staff and Board members, will be around the country offering face-to-face and online meetings with members. These will be a mix of an opportunity to listen to our community and a discussion on the future direction of Paddle Scotland. 
5. Strategy Consultation: Alongside the Development Roadshows, we will provide other opportunities for you to input into our strategy development to ensure this is accessible. 
6. Talent Pathway Review: We will continue to review the talent pathway, with a primary focus on the Olympic disciplines, alongside how we support talent across the wider organisation. This review will engage with clubs, coaches, athletes, staff and stakeholders. The intention of the review is to have a long-term plan to align the talent pathway and to give our athletes the best opportunity to achieve their potential.
7. Review of Committees and Governance Structures: This is one of the outstanding actions from the Governance Review. Again, the aim is to ensure appropriate governance is in place, and that there is strategic alignment and clarity of responsibility across the Board, governance committees, discipline development groups and wider delivery groups and committees.