Those of you who operate as referees or assistant referees on the United Counties League may have heard about the restructure that the FA has undertaken with Step 5/6 leagues.  
The United Counties League (UCL) has been affected by this restructure, and so have Northants FA clubs that have previously played within the UCL. 

The FA are restructuring the whole of the National League System across the country to form a true pyramid. I.e. 1 league at Step 1, 2 leagues at Step 2, 4 leagues at Step 3, 8 leagues at Step 4 etc. 

The restructure means that the UCL has been given an additional division Step 5, so it now has a Premier Division North, Premier Division South, and a Division 1 at Step 6.  All of these divisions will be refereed by Level 4 referees, assisted by Level 5s and below. The reserve division falls outside of the National League System, so remains unaffected by the restructure and will continue to operate as it has done in previous seasons.

The restructure has also meant that lots of clubs have been moved from one league to another. A number of Northants FA clubs have been moved to the Spartan South Midlands League. Full league formations can be found below.

Hopefully this information will help you to understand which league is best for you to officiate on, and this may be different to previous seasons unfortunately.

Some of you may have seen that Simon Cheney has stepped down as the referee appointments officer for the UCL. At present, the UCL haven’t advised us who his replacement will be, but once this has been confirmed I’m sure they will be in touch, and we will also share this information with you.  For those of you interested in officiating on the Spartan South Midlands League based on the clubs that have been moved into that league, Luke Scott will be meeting with the league over the coming weeks to discuss this, and will share all the relevant contact details once we have this information from the league.

If you have any questions about the restructure, please don’t hesitate to contact luke.scott@northamptonshirefa.com