Plans for racing to have a new regulatory body have been branded pointless by Josh Gifford.

The most senior jump trainer in Sussex believes Jockey Club plans to transfer responsibility to a new independent body are superfluous.

Racing is currently policed by the Jockey Club, and has been for over 200 years, but the proposal is designed to bring greater independence and wider accountability to the role of regulator.

But Gifford said: "By and large our racing has been and is being run really well. It has been like that in all my years in racing. Of course, incidents occur occasionally which do not reflect well at the time.

"But the Jockey Club has always looked for ways of avoiding the problems.

"I cannot see how a new body, inevitably composed of people with less experience of a very complicated industry, could do any better than the Jockey Club have done."

As Gifford points out, the vast majority of Jockey Club members do the job because of their love for racing, not financial reward.

The Jockey Club announced its intentions two days ago.

The revolutionary step follows the damaging Panorama programme broadcast on BBC television last year and the Kenyon Confronts show which preceded it.

The programme-makers claim credit for the change and suggest it does not go far enough.

The Jockey Club has long been a target for abuse, most of it uninformed, without credit for the sterling work it has done to manage an industry which is becoming increasingly complicated.

Just ten years ago, the then senior steward, Lord Hartington, launched a new governing body for racing, the British Horseracing Board, which took over all duties of the Jockey Club except licensing, security, discipline and integrity of the sport.

The club is a self-elected body approaching 100 members and been in existence for around 250 years.

Unlike the House of Lords, similarly undemocratic, almost every member of the Jockey Club has something to contribute to the good of racing, most without a personal axe to grind.

The Upper Chamber at Westminster is being dismantled without any clear picture of what will replace it, despite the fact that there has always been a nucleus of members whose intelligence and integrity have contributed to the good of the nation.

By contrast, the Jockey Club, which has itself initiated the proposed changes, has put forward its plans clearly. Four independent directors and two nominees from the Jockey Club is the suggested format of the new body.

Far from being given credit for the initiative, some reaction from other quarters has been surprising and verging on the ridiculous.

The BBC said: "The announcement does not amount to a clean break with the widely discredited set-up run by the Jockey Club."

The Jockey Club is far from being "widely discredited" and it is difficult to see how a whole industry could be handed over to an independent body in a clean break with the organisation that has been running it for so long.

Michael Caulfield, who runs the Jockeys' Association, said: "One tweed suit should not be exchanged for another. The Jockey Club is a busted brand, the new body will not be taken seriously if the same old faces reappear in key positions."

He makes no suggestions as to where new faces can be found with the expertise to run the industry on which his members depend for a living.

Mansfield MP Alan Meale, a government advisor on racing, says of the Jockey Club's plan: "About time too. At last we've got them to realise that running an industry worth billions of pounds is a serious job."

The Jockey Club has been aware of the seriousness of the task for a long time, but at least Meale had the breadth of mind to add: "This is a major step forward for racing, like the introduction ten years ago of the BHB."

The Minister for Sport, Richard Caborn has welcomed the initiative unreservedly without resorting to unconstructive criticism by some who should know better.