In its policy paper, Get Active: a strategy for the future of sport and physical activity, published in August 2023, the Government committed to working with the sport and physical activity sector to identify the most pressing sport integrity challenges and potential improvements, including how structures around complaint handling and dispute resolution could be strengthened. This work would start with a Call for Evidence.

On 30 August 2023, the Government published the Call for Evidence, setting out several questions for those wishing to respond. On 10 October 2023, it extended the deadline for responses to 31 October 2023.

In this context, sport integrity issues include:

• misconduct (such as bullying, harassment, discrimination, safeguarding issues, verbal abuse, physical abuse, and other issues that could be described as “duty of care issues”)
• doping
• corruption and match-fixing
• concerns about the handling of any of the above matters by organisations responsible for the governance of sports

Disputes solely regarding selection or other events on the field of play are not in scope.

The Call for Evidence relates to sport in the UK, for Olympic and Paralympic-level sport, and in England for other levels of sport.

The Call for evidence announcement makes it clear that the focus of the Call is around the processes for handling sport integrity issues and is not designed to capture disclosures of, or concerns around, specific incidents.

The questions seek information including how often concerns or complaints are made over sport integrity issues, how well the complaints are dealt with, the level of awareness of how to raise concerns, the level of confidence in current processes (e.g. to deal with complex cases involving multiple integrity issues) and whether changes should be made.

For more information, click here. To respond to the Call, the deadline for which is 31 October 2023, click here.