Hitchings steps down as chair of UK’s Solo Piping Judges Association

Bruce Hitchings has stepped down as chair of the Solo Piping Judges Association, effective immediately. A committee within the SPJA’s 60-odd members plans to identify an interim head to tide the organization over until its annual general meeting in November.

Hitchings had held the role since November 2023. He succeeded SPJA co-founder Colin MacLellan, who was elected to the position in 2017. The late Andrew Wright was the SPJA’s first chair when the organization was started in 2014 and continued in the role for three years.

The SPJA has worked to unify judging standards for solo competitions in the UK, which has no central organization for event sanctioning. The association works closely with the Competing Pipers Association, which assigns grades for pipers 18 and older who compete at a level most of the rest of the piping world calls “Open” or “Professional.”

While progress has been made with more significant events, such as the larger gatherings at Inverness, Oban, Inveraray, and London, most Highland games don’t separate competitions into CPA gradings or hire strictly SPJA-member judges.

The SPJA and CPA have more recently worked to establish policies to disallow teachers judging their pupils and pupils competing for their teachers, respectively, with an aim to eradicate the contentious conflict-of-interest controversy that has existed in competitive solo piping for hundreds of years.

Unlike virtually every other association for solo pipers and judges, the SPJA has no organized examination program for judges. Accreditation is completed through a combination of committee vetting and shadow judging at competitions.