The strategy, 'Badminton - A Sport for Everyone', sets out bold ambitions to make badminton the most inclusive and accessible sport in the country, support more young people to start playing and stay playing and make England a top ten badminton nation at international level.

Success at world, Olympic and Paralympic level is the pinnacle of achievement in our sport and a successful England programme fuels those ambitions and achievements on the world stage. 

This will be brought into sharper focus in the coming months as we countdown to the Paris Olympics and Paralympics.

To make England a top ten badminton nation, we need to be competitive internationally in all five disciplines and all six Para badminton classes. 

The development of our player pathway will be crucial to this from junior to senior level. At junior level, we will develop a network of six new high-performance hubs for around 100 players between 14 and 19.  

At senior level, there will be a particular focus on improving the quality of the training environment on our performance pathway with enhanced support around strength and conditioning, nutrition, psychology and lifestyle support.

We know that success on the world stage helps inspire the next generation of stars and also inspires people to pick up a racket perhaps for the first time. These medal-winning moments also increase the profile of our sport which in turn helps bring vital investment into it.

That’s why I was delighted to be joined by Rachel Choong and Nathan Robertson at the launch of our strategy in Manchester on Monday. 

Both have reached the very top of our sport and continue to be an inspiration to the next generation of players coming through our performance pathway.

We are proud of the recent success of our Para badminton players and it’s been fantastic to see this part of our sport grow with events like our first ever 4 Nations Para International which we hosted earlier this year. 

This growth will continue with a major commitment in the new strategy to further develop our Para-badminton high performance system building on the success of our centre in Sheffield.

We cannot achieve any of this of course without investment into our coaching system and the strategy commits to a number of new and exciting measures in this area. 

The most significant of these will be the introduction of a new high performance coaching programme. We will also support more of our elite players to transition into coaching and have a strong focus on upskilling our coaches.

Delivering inspirational moments and events are also critical to our ambitions to become a top badminton nation. We will unveil a new major events strategy soon focussed on delivering events that will inspire and engage the nation. 

This will include improvements to the most prestigious badminton event in the world, the YONEX All England Open Badminton Championships - a truly exhilarating and memorable festival of badminton that showcases the best in the world, bringing together the global badminton community and inspiring the next generation. 

On a domestic level, we are committed to relaunching the National Badminton League.

Finally, I wanted to return to the other key themes of our strategy - youth and inclusion.

Young people are vital to the future of the sport and we will give more children the chance to play and develop through a new primary age programme and by creating more places to play. 

This focus on primary age children is vital with secondary aged children (11 to 16-year-olds) 2.5 times more likely to play badminton at school than those at primary school.

Over one million people in England already play badminton every month but we want to increase this and make our sport more inclusive and accessible by taking it closer to communities and making it welcoming, safe and enjoyable for everyone regardless of their background. 

We believe a more diverse and inclusive sport supports the growth and success of English badminton at all levels including elite.

So, against a recent backdrop of closures to facilities, reduced opening hours and pressures on existing court space, the strategy will target a range of new spaces including village halls, faith centres and community facilities to increase opportunities for people from a wider range of backgrounds to play the sport. Around 200 schools and community venues across the country have been earmarked for more people to play.

Only by bringing all parts of our wonderful sport and badminton community together, will we achieve our ambitions to grow, transform and innovate badminton and truly make it sport for everyone in England.