Tackling discrimination with confidence and clarity

Cricket can only ever be a game for all if everyone involved has confidence the sport will act when called upon. That’s why we’ve spent the past year putting a huge amount of effort into listening and learning from past experiences so we could design and implement a new and improved way for the game to handle complaints about discrimination in recreational cricket. This work has also built on experiences from my time in policing where investigative practice has evolved to put victims at the heart of the process, as well as changes we have seen in safeguarding practice. 

We know that victims of abuse and discrimination want to be listened to, want their complaints to be taken seriously and often want to be part of any solution to tackle the problems. Furthermore, victims often want the impact of their experience acknowledged, with the organisation taking ongoing ownership for the experience they have suffered.

Our work to improve the way we handle complaints has started from a position of humility. We accept that historically it hasn’t always been easy enough to complain about discrimination, and when people have complained, too often their experience has not been satisfactory. There hasn’t been enough clarity about who is responsible for investigating complaints and what the process looks like, and people have sometimes felt they’ve been either ignored or left in the dark. That’s not good enough, and it’s a key reason why our Anti-Discrimination Unit was established in October 2022. Whereas previously there was no central team to oversee complaints made across the county network, through this unit we now have seven permanent employees focused on improving the experience for complainants, building understanding and processes across the wider cricket network, and improving our collective understanding of discrimination across the game.

There are four important areas where we’ve made significant improvements, so that people involved in cricket can have the confidence and understanding that their complaint will be handled fairly and transparently. Those steps are:

1. Making it easy for people to report discrimination. Whereas previously it was difficult for people to know which organisation they needed to complain to if they experienced discrimination, we have now made it deliberately straightforward for people to file complaints. There is a link on our website. The same exists on County websites, too. And there is a button on the Play-Cricket Live app. We don’t want to put any barriers in the way of people reporting concerns, so anonymous reporting is also available for those who don’t wish to be identified. This will help to ensure as many reports as possible are being captured.
   
   
2. Building trust and transparency. Letting people know exactly how their complaint will be handled is key to breaking down barriers. Every complaint we receive is initially processed by a central desk. Complainants now immediately receive an acknowledgement of their report. The ECB’s discrimination manager then completes a severity assessment of the report and determines the most appropriate cricket organisation to investigate the complaint. Where necessary, we will fund external support to help organisations with their investigation. We will implement a customer charter shortly to provide consistency across every complaint. It will detail the expectations of both the complainant and the relevant investigatory body to ensure a fair and transparent outcome for all involved, all the time ensuring complainants are kept informed about the progress of the case.
   
   
3. Upskilling our staff and others. Improving the experience for complainants has meant significant investment. As we’ve established our Anti-Discrimination Unit, we’ve recruited seven  people to ensure it is properly resourced, including two support roles responsible for customer contact so we can respond swiftly to people’s concerns. We’ve also created a whole programme of training for the wider cricket network, which is all part of raising awareness of what discrimination is and how it should be tackled. An Anti-Discrimination Unit Toolkit has been developed to provide essential source material to help the network. We’ve also created a new training programme – Introducing the Boundary – and we’ve taken that around the country. Initially we went to eight different locations, inviting anyone involved in cricket to come along to a very broad three-hour training session about discrimination and handling complaints. We have a three-year plan for this training, but we’ve already had 500 participants involved. A final part of this equation is new engagement with volunteer-led leagues, with a dedicated ECB discipline officer now helping leagues to identify discrimination and deal with it robustly.
   
   
4. Boosting our support and our systems. When people feel they have been discriminated against, we want them to know they are not alone. Two new discrimination advisors are on hand to offer complainants support throughout their journey, giving them an immediate point of contact for any questions or concerns. At the same time, we’ve equipped ourselves with better technology, so we have a much more thorough game-wide understanding of the incidence of discrimination and how reports are handled, ensuring complaints are dealt with appropriately and lessons from one area can be shared so others learn from them as well.

Discrimination complaints will always pose a challenge, but we are determined to consistently listen and learn. Our ultimate goal, of course, is to prevent discrimination occurring in the first place. But in those instances where it does happen, we want to ensure people have the confidence that their complaint will be dealt with fairly, thoroughly, and appropriately. We hope this work will go a long way towards ensuring that.