1. The four rules in plain English

Everything else flows from these:

  1. Get written parental consent before publishing. For the club website, social media, newsletters, or printed media. Renewed every season.
  2. Don't pair the photo with identifying information. First name + shirt number is fine. Full name + home town + school is not.
  3. Make consent specific. Separate boxes for website, social media, newsletters. Parent ticks what they're OK with.
  4. Honour withdrawal. If a parent says "remove the photo", remove it promptly — same day if possible.

Do those four and you're materially compliant with FA safeguarding + UK GDPR for photographic content. Everything below is just the situations where one or more of those rules is ambiguous in practice.

Embed this in your annual player registration form. Don't ship it as a separate document — separate documents get lost. Default every box to unticked:

Photo & media consent — [Club Name]

We sometimes take photos and short videos of players for use in match reports, on our website, and on our social-media channels. Please tick the box(es) you're happy with:

☐ I consent to my child's photo appearing on [Club Name]'s website (matches and team photos, first name + shirt number only).

☐ I consent to my child's photo appearing on [Club Name]'s social media (Facebook, Instagram).

☐ I consent to my child's photo and first name being included in printed match-day programmes for our home games.

You can withdraw any of these consents at any time by emailing [Welfare Officer email]. We will remove published images promptly.

Parent / guardian name: ____________________
Child's name: ____________________
Date: ____________________
Signature: ____________________

Renew it at the start of every season. Kids grow up. Situations change. A consent from three years ago is not consent today.

3. 10 real-life scenarios, decided

A team photo at the start of the season, on the club website. Consent obtained from every kid's parent.
Yes
Publish away. Caption with just first names + shirt numbers. No surnames, no home addresses, no school names.
A match-action photo of a child going through on goal. Consent obtained.
Yes
Fine. Caption "James, 8, on his way to the equaliser" is fine. "James Smith of Oak Road" is not.
The team WhatsApp group has a photo with everyone's faces. Parent of one player has not consented to social-media use.
Depends
WhatsApp is private messaging, not publication, so a closed parents' group is generally fine. But the consent form should explicitly mention this if you do it regularly. If a parent objects, stop sharing photos that feature their child in the group.
A coach posts the team photo to their personal Instagram.
No
The club's consent doesn't cover personal accounts. Coach should delete the post unless every parent has separately consented. The same rule applies to assistant coaches and committee members.
A child whose parent has not consented is in the back row of a group photo, partially visible.
Depends
If the child is recognisable, you need consent. If they're genuinely incidental and unrecognisable (back of head, blurred, far in the background), it's a judgement call — err on the side of cropping them out or blurring.
Local newspaper covers your U13 cup final, takes photos including kids without your consent process.
Depends
Press at official tournament matches operate under their own editorial guidelines, which usually require parental consent. Most reputable newspapers will ask the club for help getting consents. If they don't, raise it with the editor — but you don't have direct control over what they publish.
A child is photographed in distress (crying, injured). Parent has given general consent.
No
Don't publish. General consent doesn't cover images that could embarrass the child or their family. Use judgement; protect the child.
A parent wants to take photos of their own kid playing.
Yes
Parents photographing their own child at a public-pitch match is fine. Issue arises only if they post wider-team photos publicly without consent of the other parents — clubs should remind parents of this once a season.
An end-of-season video montage with photos of every player.
Yes (with consent)
Fine if every featured player has parental consent. Watch the soundtrack — copyrighted music can get the video taken down by Facebook/Instagram, which is a separate problem.
A player's old photo is on the website. They left the club a year ago. Parent emails asking for it down.
Yes — comply
Remove it within a few days. Consent withdrawal is unconditional under UK GDPR — you don't get to ask why. Log it for your records (date received, action taken).

4. When a parent withdraws consent

Three things to do, in order:

  1. Acknowledge. Same day. “Thanks for letting us know — we'll have all images down within a few days.”
  2. Audit. Search your website, social-media archives, email newsletter archives, printed programme files. Remove or replace.
  3. Confirm. Once done, email back: “All images we found have been removed. Please let us know if you spot anything we missed.”

It's almost never a hostile move — usually a parent moves house, changes jobs, has a privacy concern, or the child just doesn't want to be online. Treat it as routine maintenance, not a complaint.

5. Press + tournament photographers

At competitive fixtures and tournaments, you may encounter:

6. Parents photographing their own kid

At every grassroots match the touchline is half-full of phones pointing at the pitch. You can't stop this and you shouldn't try. What you can do:

For parents wanting a private record

MyFootballJournal is a private place for parents to log their child's season — match notes, photos, goals, milestones — without anything going public. Built by the team behind GrassrootsFC.

Photo consent, handled

GrassrootsFC's player registration form includes the photo + media consent fields out of the box, with proper opt-in defaults and a parent-visible withdrawal form.

Create your free club site →