Badminton England: 'Surprised and disappointed in Wallwork's decision'

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BADMINTON England and GB Badminton, is extremely disappointed to learn of Jenny Wallwork's decision to step down from the GB World Class Performance Programme.

Jenny's decision has taken us by surprise and we are disappointed with the manner in which she has chosen to communicate it. We had discussed Jenny's programme and how it should look in considerable depth with her in the last couple of months and thought we were moving forward positively.

Indeed, we felt we had received strong signals to this end. We have ongoing dialogue with all players regarding their individual programmes - for which many factors are taken into account - and remain confident in our processes.

England has just won a bronze medal at the European Championships, a medal that included some world class performances against some of the best players in the world, and the programme is moving towards Rio in great shape.

All players have a voice and are listened to as decisions are made concerning their individual programmes. However, devising the GB programme is a huge and complex undertaking, encompassing many players, and we are dependent on everybody working together to achieve our goals.

We believe we have made good progress in the last 12-18 months, particularly having successfully integrated a group of new young players at the National Badminton Centre in Milton Keynes and we are already seeing the impact this is having on performance levels.

The result in Russia at last week’s European Championships is another indicator of this and we are looking forward with great optimism to the Commonwealth Games and Rio 2016.