Safehire.ai has become an official Benefit Partner of the Chartered Institute for the Management of Sport and Physical Activity (CIMSPA), a partnership that matters to institute professionals as chartered bodies extend enterprise grade safeguarding tools to smaller clubs and voluntary organisations that could not previously afford them. Eligible CIMSPA partners now receive preferential, discounted access to Safehire.ai's digital risk screening service.

CIMSPA is the chartered professional body for the UK's sport and physical activity workforce, supporting national organisations, employers, coaches and instructors. It does not publish commercial financials.

Safehire.ai is a Gloucestershire based company offering digital risk screening built on military intelligence analytical processes, founded by Simon Holden and Sean Lumley. The company began in the education sector and recently secured £500,000 in private investment to scale into other high trust sectors.

The partnership responds to intensifying safeguarding scrutiny across sport rather than a routine vendor deal.

The NSPCC helpline recorded almost 700 contacts about child protection concerns in a sports setting in 2025/26, a 10 per cent rise on the previous year, according to NSPCC. Separately, the Crime and Policing Act 2026 introduced a statutory duty to report child sexual abuse for anyone in regulated activity with children, according to the British Judo Association.

Hasan Mussa, head of governance and compliance at CIMSPA, said, "We are delighted to have Safehire.ai on board as a CIMSPA Benefit Partner. As the sport and physical activity sector landscape evolves, we are committed to ensuring the safeguarding of participants."

Simon Holden, chief executive officer of Safehire.ai, said, "Our partnership with CIMSPA is about giving sport and physical activity organisations practical, proportionate access to digital due diligence, so they can make better-informed decisions about the people they bring into those environments."

For the sector, embedding preferential vendor access into a chartered body's benefit programme extends compliance capability to smaller clubs and voluntary bodies that could never individually negotiate enterprise pricing. For the sector's safeguarding leads specifically, digital risk screening adds visibility that traditional disclosure checks alone do not capture.

Whether Safehire.ai's move from education into sport signals a broader expansion across other regulated, high trust sectors will depend on how many CIMSPA partners take up the discounted access.

Source: Punchline Gloucester / NSPCC / British Judo Association