British Cycling votes to accept changes

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Great Britain won a combined 33 medals across the Rio 2016 Olympics and Paralympics

British Cycling will retain £43m in public funding after its national council approved governance reforms in an extraordinary general meeting.

A 75% majority was required to pass the changes, demanded by sports minister Tracey Crouch to make governing bodies more independent and diverse.

As part of the deal, a board place will be created for the 10 English regions.

“The vote is the start of an exciting new chapter,” said British Cycling’s chief executive Julie Harrington.

“Securing funding will enable us to inspire more people onto two wheels.”

Funding agency Sport England had allocated £17m to British Cycling to boost grassroots participation, while UK Sport is set to invest £26m for its Olympic and Paralympic teams’ preparations for Tokyo 2020.

However, the government deemed that, from November, boards of governing bodies must be “the ultimate decision-making body and exercise all of the powers of the organisation” – something that former chief executive Peter King thought would be rejected by more than 25% of British Cycling’s 130,000 members.

British Cycling executives – including president Bob Howden and chairman Jonathan Browning – attended a series of regional meetings in a bid to convince members to support the reforms.

British six-time Olympic champion Sir Chris Hoy wrote to the 10 regional chairs to urge them to accept the proposals.

And Howden warned that cycling “could be lost to an entire generation” if their Sport England funding was withdrawn.

To date, the government has had mixed results persuading sports to adopt its Code for Sports Governance, designed to improve governance standards across sport.

In May, the Football Association’s council finally approved reforms, having been threatened with a £15m funding cut.

But earlier this month, the national governing body for table tennis became the first to reject the government’s standards and had its full £9m Sport England funding award suspended as a result.

British Cycling chairman Jonathan Browning has attended meetings in a bid to convince members to support a package of reforms