Premier League to appoint Clare Sumner as new chief policy and corporate affairs officer
The Premier League are set to appoint Clare Sumner as their new chief policy and corporate affairs officer.
Sumner is currently serving notice at the BBC where she holds the role of Director, Policy. She has been with the corporation since 2014.
Clubs were informed of the appointment earlier this week.
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The role has been vacant since the departure of Helen MacNamara, a former Deputy Cabinet Secretary in Boris Johnson’s government, in January of this year after fewer than two years in post.
MacNamara was fined by police in 2022 due to a role in the infamous Downing Street lockdown parties while she was a senior civil servant.
Sumner’s role with the Premier League will see her work closely with the government at a time when a new independent regulator for football is set to be introduced.
The government confirmed last week it was “minded” to set up the new regulator independent of any existing body, but that all options remain under review.
Tracey Crouch, who recommended a regulator as part of the fan-led review of the game in 2021, previously accused the Premier League of trying to “kick plans into the long grass”, a claim chief executive Richard Masters refuted.
“I would say we have done nothing else but engage with this process,” he told a Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee in March.
“We have done an enormous amount of work to try and assess what the answers are to the questions posed first by the fan-led review and secondly by the government’s response and now by the white paper.
“It has dominated every shareholders’ meeting we have had.”
The Premier League declined to comment and the BBC were approached.
(Photo: BBC)
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