and they formed the British League of Racing Cyclists. It and the NCU fought each other until they merged in 1959. The British Cycling Federation The merged organisation became the British Cycling Federation. It accepted racing on the open road and controlled all competitive cycling other than time-trialling, which remained with the RTTC. Cyclo-cross was administered by the British Cyclo-Cross Association, which was linked to the BCF. The BCF was recognised by the UCI. The first officials were perceived to be drawn largely from the NCU and there was bitterness among supporters of the former BLRC that they had been betrayed. The BCF had offices in central London. The first were in the headquarters of the Sports Council in Park Crescent, near Hyde Park. They subsequently moved to other London premises on Brompton Road and Upper Woburn Place, before moving out of the capital to Rockingham Road, Kettering, Northamptonshire in 1988, and finally to the velodrome in Manchester. The British Cycling Federation was renamed simply British Cycling after it merged with the British Cyclo-Cross Association, the British Mountain Bike Federation, the English BMX Association and the British Cycle Speedway Council. Each is now a commission within the BCF. In 1996, the BCF incurred large debts as a result of a legal dispute with Tony Doyle, who resigned from his position as President of the Federation shortly after its Board attempted to remove him. Doyle had been elected to the Presidency in late 1995 on a platform of increasing transparency and accountability in the Federation: the campaign to remove him was based on claims that he had failed to declare his role as a consultant to a company that wanted to act as the promoter for the 1996 UCI Track Cycling World Championships in Manchester. In December 1996, the report of auditors from the UK Sports Council into the Federation's finances and management found that there were serious shortcomings in its procedures for accounting and control of finances and potential conflicts of interests between board members and leading companies in the cycling sector. The board were then removed by the membership and replaced with an emergency management committee. As a result of the report, Minister for Sport Iain Sproat warned that the BCF's Sports Council grants could be withdrawn and that it could be banned from applying for Lottery money. Brian Cookson was elected as President soon afterwards: he described the