Issues such as requiring a licence for having a radio in the changing rooms and expensive public liability insurance are wasting time and money and stopping volunteers from playing a fuller role in their communities, claims the Sport and Recreation Alliance.

Their report into the regulatory burdens facing clubs highlight problems such as being charged VAT to develop public facilities open to the community - forcing clubs to raise 20 per cent more than they should need to – and local councils banning volunteers from maintaining footpaths and rights of way in case they are sued.

Even the smallest clubs have to register as a "data controller" under the Data Protection Act.

The report will feed into the Government's wider review of regulation being conducted by the Cabinet Office.

Sport and Recreation Alliance chair Brigid Simmonds believes the review can provide real momentum for change in the way the sector is regulated.

"Every politician acknowledges that sports clubs do nothing but good in their communities, but now is the chance to back that acknowledgement with actions and to make life easier for the volunteers who run our clubs," she said.

"Quite simply, sports clubs are choked by red tape.

"Many of it may be well-meaning but that doesn't take away from the fact that it is making life so hard for clubs that it is putting volunteers off, wasting their valuable time and actually preventing them from growing.

"Sports clubs are unique bodies - the vast majority are run by volunteers on behalf of the communities in which they live.

"They aren't businesses and there's not a competitor waiting to step in if a club folds or a volunteer resigns.

"Our clubs provide a service to their communities which is irreplaceable and that needs to be recognised in the way rules and regulations are applied to them.

"Sometimes that will mean making exceptions to the rules so that our clubs can thrive.

"This is the first time in a generation that a government has taken our long-standing complaints about over-regulation of clubs seriously.

"The review is wide-ranging but we are optimistic that many of the issues we raise can be solved by working together in the spirit in which the report was commissioned."