Incoming Register of Exercise Professionals' (REPs) Registrar Jean-Ann Marnoch has set out her hopes and objectives for the organisation's future.

Building on the success already achieved by her predecessor, Cliff Collins, and drawing on her first hand experience as not only a fitness instructor but her work as executive director of CYQ, she wants, among other things, to increase the professional standards of instructors.

"The ability to call ourselves professional, properly recognised on a register that the whole industry has bought into brings status and opportunities for fitness instructors," she said. "There is, however, work to do. The public needs to recognise and trust the service they get from a registered professional as do the related, but outside, industries. "If we continue to protect the integrity and raise the status of the register and its members there will be a myriad of career pathways and opportunities both inside and outside the health and fitness industry. "Until now, the relationship between our branch of the sector and others with a potentially close link to us, such as the medical profession, has been blurred. We all understand the difference between a GP, a nurse and a surgeon but do these professions understand our career structures and the areas of expertise that pertain across them?

I believe they would engage more with our industry if this was possible and it would further increase the recognition of our professional status benefiting both REPs' members and their employers alike, not to mention the most important stakeholders - our beneficiaries, the public."

She added: "My focus over the next five years is to bring increased value to members and employers, a professional status that is highly respected within and outside the industry and to earn the trust of the public, our customers.

"I will continue to work with international standards and registers as there is strength in numbers. It won't be long before the whole world recognises the professional status of this industry and its instructors and that will be good for everyone."