Questions mount over future of Scottish Gymnastics Association

Image: Sportscotland announced it had "no confidence" in SGA

The future of the Scottish Gymnastics Association (SGA) has been cast into further doubt after the national governing body issued redundancy notices to its entire development and high performance staff.

The move comes just two weeks after sportscotland began an official inquest into dealings at SGA following "serious allegations of misconduct by senior management".

As part of the inquest, sportscotland pulled all public funding from the association.

Following the redundancies, sportscotland said it would step in to safeguard the posts and pay all eight members of staff directly on exactly the same terms and conditions.

A sportscotland spokesperson said: "As a repercussion of a highly critical, independent review into SGA and the continued intransigence shown by SGA's senior management and board, sportscotland has lost all confidence in the current leadership of SGA.

"We remain deeply committed to gymnastics in Scotland and are exploring all options open to us to invest directly into the sport, which is why we have taken action to guarantee the positions of SGA development and high performance staff.

"sportscotland is aware of the deep discontent directed towards SGA's Board and senior management by the majority of member clubs at last week's general meeting.

"At that meeting, SGA committed to holding an EGM in October, and the consortium of concerned clubs has made it clear to us that they no longer consider SGA to have a clear representative mandate.

"We will only resume discussions with SGA when our confidence in its Board and senior management is restored and they have a clear mandate from gymnastics clubs."

In response, Lynn Milne, president of SGA, issued a statement saying: "As you are probably aware, sportscotland had suspended the funding of eight Scottish Gymnastics staff further to the publication of a wholly mis-representative and inaccurate report.

"Since this decision to withdraw funding was taken by sportscotland, we have been working very hard with several parties to ensure this funding is reinstated. I am very pleased to say that this decision has been overturned and the funding for these posts has been reinstated.

"As part of our discussions to work in partnership with sportscotland, we had been due to meet with their chief executive. We have just been informed by sportscotland this has now been postponed. We will continue to do everything possible to work in partnership with sportscotland."

"I would also like to take this opportunity to thank the huge number of staff and members who have been in touch with their overwhelming support."