Club committee roles: who you need, and what they actually do

The short version

• The four key official posts are chairperson, secretary, treasurer and the welfare officer for the type of football the club runs.
• All four must be held by somebody aged 18 or over, and they cannot be left vacant.
• At a club with under-18 teams, all four must complete Safeguarding for Committee Members before the club can affiliate.
• A club states its key officials as part of affiliation, and only one person can hold the secretary role.
• Every youth team has to name all its managers and coaches, each with an in-date accepted DBS and the Safeguarding Children course.
• A club with adult teams needs a named Welfare Officer (Adult Teams), and for 2026/27 that role requires the Player Welfare Course.
• If the club welfare officer has not completed the Welfare Officer Course, your affiliation goes to the County FA for review rather than going through automatically.

The four key officials

Club Portal has four key official posts: chairperson, secretary, treasurer and welfare officer (opens in a new tab). Each must be held by somebody aged 18 or over, and none of them can simply be left empty. They are also the posts that can manage club links.

Which welfare officer post applies depends on the football the club runs. A club with under-18 teams needs a club welfare officer. A club with adult teams needs a Welfare Officer (Adult Teams), and for 2026/27 that role requires the Player Welfare Course. A club with adult disability teams needs a Welfare Officer (Adult Disability Teams), with the Safeguarding Adults Course. Where a club runs more than one of those types of football, more than one welfare role may therefore be needed.

At a club with under-18 teams, the chairperson, secretary, treasurer and club welfare officer all have to complete Safeguarding for Committee Members before the club can affiliate. The committee's own safeguarding training is a requirement, not just the coaches'.

What follows is what these roles involve in practice at a grassroots club, rather than a job description set by The FA.

Chairperson. Leads the committee and the club and chairs its meetings. In practice this is where the harder decisions tend to land: a coach who is not working out, a complaint that has escalated, whether the club can afford another team.

Secretary. The administrative centre. Affiliation, league correspondence, fixtures, meeting minutes and the club's contact with the County FA. The FA's affiliation FAQs (opens in a new tab) say only one person can hold the secretary role, though a club can add assistant secretaries with the same access, which is worth doing before the workload buries somebody.

Treasurer. Oversees the club's finances and the records that show where the money went. Depending on how the club divides the work, that can include subs, pitch hire, referees, affiliation, league fees, kit, insurance, grants and sponsorship.

Welfare officer. The named safeguarding role, with its own qualification requirements. Our guide to the club welfare officer covers the role in detail, including the safeguarding routes and qualification requirements.

What affiliation actually asks for

The FA's affiliation requirements for 2026/27 (opens in a new tab) set out what a club has to have in place. The committee-facing parts are:

• Key officials stated for the club.
• Public liability insurance covering the club for the year ahead, and personal accident insurance for every team, including Under 5s and Under 6s, subject to the exemptions The FA lists.
• A club ground, and a home ground for each team.
• A safeguarding declaration accepted. A club whose teams play at different levels accepts more than one.
• Every youth team's managers and coaches named, each with an in-date accepted DBS and the Safeguarding Children course.
• For clubs with adult teams, a named Welfare Officer (Adult Teams), which for 2026/27 requires the Player Welfare Course. That course is also required for named team officials attached to open-age teams, other than the team secretary. Clubs with adult disability teams require a Welfare Officer (Adult Disability Teams) with the Safeguarding Adults Course.

Affiliation is now organised around teams rather than the club as a whole, and is designed to operate through the year, with the new season's process opening in June. The FA's affiliation checklist (opens in a new tab) is the practical starting point: check officials and their qualifications, add club and team grounds, then read and accept the safeguarding declarations.

What holds an affiliation up

There are two different stages at which this bites.

Before you submit, Club Portal will not let you select a team that is missing a required ground, official or qualification. The gap has to be filled before the team can go forward at all.

After submission, three things send the application to the County FA for review instead of it processing automatically, according to The FA's guidance for counties (opens in a new tab):

• The club has outstanding debts.
• The club has uploaded its own insurance documents rather than buying County FA cover.
• The club welfare officer has not completed the Welfare Officer Course.

The third is the avoidable one. A welfare officer who is named but has not completed the course does not stop the club dead, but it does take the submission out of automatic processing and put it in a queue at the County FA. Courses take time to book, so this is a job for the spring rather than the week you affiliate.

The roles clubs add next

Beyond the four, what a committee needs depends on how many teams it runs. None of the following is an FA requirement:

• Player registration officer. Registers players with the league and keeps the records straight. As a club grows, separating this work from the secretary can make the workload easier to manage.
• Fixtures or match secretary. Pitches, kick-off times, referees, and the weekly rearrangement of everything.
• Facilities or pitch officer. Bookings, keys, goals, nets and the relationship with whoever owns the ground.
• Kit officer. Orders, sizes, spares and the sponsor's logo in the right place.
• Volunteer or coach coordinator. Who is coaching which team, whose qualifications expire when, and who needs a course booking.
• Communications lead. Website, social accounts and the messages that go out to parents.
• Fundraising lead. Events, grants and sponsorship.

Two principles are worth applying. Keep the qualification tracking with one person, because a lapsed DBS or an expired first aid certificate is found at the worst possible moment otherwise. And give people a role with edges, rather than asking for general help, because a defined job gets accepted and an open-ended one does not.

Running the committee

The following is our own practice rather than an FA rule, but it holds up across clubs of any size.

• Write down who holds which post and what it covers, even if the committee is four friends. It is the only thing that makes handover possible.
• Minute decisions, not discussions. A line saying what was agreed, by whom and by when is worth three pages of narrative.
• Agree the following season's roles before the season ends, then put them through whatever formal appointment or election your club's constitution requires.
• Keep safeguarding separate from ordinary committee escalation. A concern follows the club's safeguarding route rather than going up the committee chain, which matters most when the concern involves a committee member. Our welfare officer guide sets out the welfare officer, County FA and emergency routes.
• Build a second pair of eyes into club finances. Avoid leaving one person with sole control of authorising payments and recording or reconciling them.
• Track qualification expiry dates in one place and set reminders well before they expire. DBS renewals, course bookings and other requirements do not all have the same lead time.

If you are starting from scratch

A new club needs the four key officials before it can affiliate, which in practice means finding them before anything else. Our guides to starting a grassroots club and England Football accreditation cover the rest of the setup, and first aid in grassroots football explains the medical qualifications each team needs.

Elsewhere in the UK

These requirements are for clubs affiliating to an English County FA. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland run their own affiliation and club requirements through their own associations.