2009 has been our busiest year so far, and we have considerably increased the amount of coaching we are delivering from this time last year. It's always challenging to ensure that coaches have a full diary of coaching (and not just 3.30 to 4.30pm each day!), but thanks to some of the partnership work that we have been involved in this year, we are making progress in this area with more day long and half day long slots of coaching. Thank you in particular to the Wye Valley School Sports Partnership in this respect, and we now look forward to embarking on a similar programme with the Sir William Borlase's School Sports Partnership.

During 2009 Impact has also ventured into some exciting new areas to support our core business. We have recently started an equipment hire scheme where organizations, clubs, or schools can hire out a wide range of sports equipment that might not normally be cost effective to purchase. These range from an amazing Dance Mat systems to inflatable goal posts, bowling machines, and indoor athletics sets. If you wish to find out more about these, please call us on 01296 585569. A new brochure will be available next year which details the range of equipment available to hire. Sports Administration services is yet another area in which we have ventured during 2009. We have worked with Bucks Hockey to provide them with an administration service for them and their coaches. Over 800 participants have been processed as part of the Bucks Hockey JDC, JAC, and JRPC hockey programmes. We have also put many of the Bucks Hockey coaches onto our books to help ensure that minimum standards (such as CRB's Safeguarding, and First Aid), are all kept up to date to keep coaches coaching rather than have them worry about paperwork. Thank you to all at Bucks Hockey for giving us the opportunity to support the fantastic work you do. We will of course be investigating whether we can also deliver a similar service to other clubs and sports organizations in the county during next year.

Next year will be an exciting time in respect of the support that we are able to offer coaches. We will have a new Coaching Development Manager (CDM) starting with us soon. The role of the CDM will be (together with the support of Sports Coach UK), to establish a new Coaching Support System Network (CSSN), for Bucks which will be looking at areas such as continual professional development and training for coaches as well as support such as mentoring. We will also be expanding our coach assessment process to see if we can offer this as a service to clubs to help them to develop the best coaches possible. Already one of our team is working with a ladies football team and their coach to help them to make their training time as effective as possible and to ultimately deliver results on the pitch.

And finally where would we be without all the fantastic coaches we have worked with this year? A big thank you to all of you for your hard work and commitment to maintaining the high standards that we expect. We now have coaches delivering more sports than ever before, from badminton to boccia, and from Dodgeball to dance! We have targeted certain sports which have been underrepresented in terms of coaches, and we are slowly improving the situation with these. Netball has been a notable success with several new coaches coming onto our books which has made it easier to offer clients a coach for the sport of their choice. However we know that we still have our work cut out for us in this respect. We have several sports where we are still underrepresented in terms of qualified coaches, so if you know a coach who would like to register with us, please give them our website address: www.impactbucks.org .

So all that it remains for us to say is to have a very Happy Christmas and all the best for 2010. We wish you health and happiness!

Thank you from all at the Impact team.