Compliance with the Code for Sports Governance is a condition attached to public funding, not general good-practice guidance UKA is free to disregard.

The table above marks "Not stated" for whether UK Athletics says it consulted athletes in setting the 2026 policy. For an earlier one - the 2023 World Championships in Budapest - UKA did make that claim directly. Technical director Stephen Maguire told Athletics Weekly the policy "was announced about a year ago and developed after consultation with athletes in focus group meetings and consultation with the Athlete Commission before being approved by the Board." Source: runblogrun, reporting Maguire's Athletics Weekly interview, July 2023.

What that consultation actually produced isn't published anywhere this page could locate - no minutes, no summary of what athletes raised, no account of what, if anything, changed as a result. The clearest evidence of what happened next comes from the same period's press coverage: after the policy had already been announced and applied - the team size cut from 77 the previous year to 51, several ranked or previously-finalist athletes excluded - the UKA Athletes' Commission was reported to be "seeking UKA's position on whether they will be willing to extend selections to athletes by virtue of World Rankings Invitations." Source: Inside the Games, "UK Athletics World Championship selection policy is clear - but is it fair, or even sensible?", 2023.

That is the Commission still asking the federation to reconsider the central substance of a policy UKA's own account says it had already helped shape before Board approval. This page draws no conclusion about what was actually said inside the focus group meetings themselves - that isn't published anywhere - but a Commission still pressing UKA on the core question after the policy was live is hard to square with "consultation... before being approved" having settled it. Consultation and being informed of a decision already taken are not the same thing, and nothing published distinguishes which one this was. For how selected and non-selected athletes themselves described the same policy at the time, see GB selection approach and performance, which covers that ground; consistent with the rest of this page, the account above stays with what is documented about the process itself, not athlete opinion.

The sections above test whether governance commitments are published. This section tests something narrower: for the judgements the 2026 European Championships Selection Policy asks the panel to make, is the method behind them named anywhere in that published Policy?

It is not. The Policy sets out the selection process, the qualification routes, and the test applied at each round - described, inconsistently, as capability, likelihood, ability and potential. Round 4 asks the panel to weigh "assessment of future global competitive potential to progress from top 8 performances to medal at future senior World Championships and Olympic Games". Round 5 asks whether an athlete has "demonstrated a likelihood of achieving the Performance Objectives". Neither round names a method for making that assessment.

The Performance Funnel is named in UK Athletics' published Futures Programme Selection Policy and in England Athletics' published Junior Talent Programme guide, both of which list an athlete's position on it as a selection criterion. It is not named in the published 2026 European Championships Selection Policy, which sets no numeric standard for any event and describes no method for assessing progression or for estimating what a championship will require.

So the same organisation names the tool in one published selection policy and not in another. An athlete assessed for a pathway programme can find the criterion in writing. An athlete assessed for a championship team cannot.

A projected future qualifying mark - the other half of the "likelihood" test in Round 5 - remains unsourced to any public document at either level. This project tests two plausible forecasting approaches separately, finding one systematically biased by 2.43m, but whether or how a panel actually projects what a championship will require cannot be determined from anything published, by UK Athletics or England Athletics, at any stage of the pathway.

The consequence holds regardless of what method, if any, is actually used at championship level. A criterion whose method isn't published for that decision cannot be anticipated, prepared for, checked, or tested in advance - not by the athlete it will be applied to, not by their coach, and not by the Athletes' Commission, whose Terms of Reference commit UK Athletics to "appropriately integrated athlete voice... in its decision-making structures." A body cannot scrutinise a method it was never told existed for the decision in question.

The appeals procedure closes off this route as a remedy. Paragraph 17 of the Fast Appeals Procedure states "there are no appeals allowed against the content of the published Selection Policy," and paragraph 16 states the panel's "judgement and discretion... are not in themselves capable of challenge." A method that sits behind the published criteria, rather than in them, is untouched by either document.

Netherlands quote (from the Bezwaarregeling): "Deze eisen en procedures zijn tot stand gekomen in samenspraak met de Atletencommissie (AC) en de Technische Staf." England Athletics quote (April 2026): "After an extensive internal review and in consultation with Team England and the UKA Athlete Commission, England Athletics has made some updates to the Commonwealth Games Athletics Selection Policy... to ensure full transparency and to reflect what athletes will be required to demonstrate to be considered for nomination," and "All changes from the previous published version of the policy are highlighted in yellow." Source: England Athletics, April 2026.

Source documents: UK, England Athletics, Netherlands, Spain, Belgium, Czechia, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece (inaccessible), Ireland, Italy, Latvia (secondary only), Norway, Poland (inaccessible), Slovakia, Slovenia, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine (inaccessible).

• This page compares published documents. A federation may consult athletes extensively without recording it in the selection policy, and this analysis would not capture that.
• Absence of a published document is not proof that a process does not exist.
• Governance requirements differ between countries. Only UK Athletics is bound by the Code for Sports Governance, so the comparison of other federations is descriptive, not a compliance assessment.
• No athlete views, survey data or testimony are used anywhere on this page. Questions about how athletes experience these processes are outside what documents can answer and are not addressed here.
• Documents were current as at the date shown below. Federations revise policies, sometimes mid-season.
• This page draws on one instance where these two specific tools became visible, obtained through the individual notes-request right in the appeals procedure. It cannot establish how many other undisclosed criteria of this kind exist, or how often either tool has been used in decisions where no notes were ever requested.