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Peter Scarlett at Bishop's Stortford RFC. Photo: Herts & Essex Observer
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Life is sweet at Bishop's Stortford RFC in Hertfordshire, with a new RFU-funded drainage system helping to produce a green and pleasant training pitch, and club stalwart and energetic fund-raiser Peter Scarlett celebrating an MBE in the Queen's birthday honours list.
Scarlett, 71, was working for the Bank of England in Threadneedle Street (and later as an engineering services manager at their Loughton print works - yes, literally printing money!) when he married and moved to Bishop's Stortford in 1959 and pitched up to the rugby club for the 1960-61 season. He captained the 1st XV in 1961-62 and 67-68 before becoming President for two years in 2003.
Those statistics merely scratch the surface of an adult life dedicated to rugby and civic service, in part through Scarlett's Kickstart Trust, a charity which helps the unemployed and workers made redundant re-train and find new jobs. He is also a governor of Hockerill Anglo European College, which achieved outstanding academic results last summer, and all these aspects were cited when Scarlett received the MBE for services to the community in Bishop's Stortford.
Bishop's Stortford - where England No.8s Ben Clarke and Ben Skirving learned their rugby - is a CASC-designated club competing in National 3 London & SE whose colts won the county championship and league last season. They were awarded the Mini & Youth Seal of Approval in 2008.
Scarlett is also a member of the Oval Club, a group of past players who operate at arm's length from the rugby club to provide funding for worthwhile projects such as the drainage system which has created a lush surface on the floodlit pitch where previously countless training sessions every season were called off due to waterlogging. The £59,000 project comprised £35,000 from the RFU's Capital Facilities Investment Programme * as well as funds from Viridor Landfill Credits, East Herts Council and the club. Bishop's Stortford had received an RFU Community Club Development Programme grant of £30,000 towards their new training floodlights in 2006.
With so much experience behind him, Scarlett's views of how clubs and the RFU can work together and prosper are instructive. "In 2002 the club formed a working party to look at what needed doing to the clubhouse," he recalled. "We needed to raise about £200,000 and I sought out what grants were available, in any form. We became a CASC and received a 28 per cent increase on donations. We wrote a Sports Development Plan which became the backbone of fund-raising in our dealings with the RFU, the East Herts District Council and the Foundation for Sport and the Arts.
"The Plan told them they were not putting money into something fly by night, a club with ideas on the back of a fag paper. It enabled our club to focus thoroughly on what we were doing. Most of all we focussed on development of players."
When Bishop's Stortford needed £30,000 to extend the car park, they canvassed local residents and demonstrated to them and the council the benefits of avoiding nuisance parkers during Sunday morning mini rugby. At other times Scarlett emphasised the social, educational and healthy benefits of making sport available to players from rural and urban parts of the area. Of around 40 players involved in pre-season first-team training, 75 per cent came through the club's ranks. The 1st XV fly half Tom Coleman is passing on the goodwill by coaching girls' rugby in schools. The club's Silver Leys ground (parts of which were bequeathed originally by the Gilbey gin-making family for polo) is available for schools and local groups, and the HSBC Rugby Festival for state schools is just one of many events held there. The club stages the town's fireworks display every November.
"The role the RFU and Herts RFU have played in the club in terms of developing facilities has been monumental," said Scarlett. "The RFU's funding managers Dave Stubley and now Rick Bruin have been first class. Pete Engledow, who is our first team coach and Herts RDO, has made a tremendous contribution.
"At a time when the sport is taking a bashing, here is one club that would say a big thank you to the RFU. We have developed the clubhouse, the floodlights and now the drainage system. When I talk to friends who are not in rugby they say they don't know how we do it. I always say the first people to talk to about funding are the RFU. It is a highly respected organisation and the club couldn't operate in the way we do, day to day, without that support."
* Notes to editors: The aim of the RFU's Capital Facilities Investment Programme is that by working with Government, the RFU will invest in quality facilities that are well managed and strategically located, thereby supporting the RFU's Community Rugby aims of More and Better Quality People, Places, Access for All and Enjoyment.
These key aims in turn will be measured by numbers playing the game, number of matches being played, improvement in the sustainability of clubs and the number of effective people supporting the playing of the game.
Last December, Sport England announced a £480 million investment in 46 sports to deliver grassroots sporting opportunities and a lasting Olympic legacy of one million people playing more sport.
Funding was awarded on the basis of the ability of the 46 sports to increase the number of people playing and enjoying sport, and to create development pathways for those with talent. Responsibility for delivery has been placed in the hands of each governing body, with clear targets agreed on a sport-by-sport basis.
The RFU has been awarded £30.7m over a four year period, £12m of which has been ring-fenced for capital facility investment in support of its National and County Facility Strategies and Strategic Critical Success Factors.
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