UCI boss Brian Cookson made late contribution to controversial cycling review

Set up by British Cycling and funding agency UK Sport last April, the five-strong independent panel's first take on the allegations made by former Great Britain rider Jess Varnish and others was finished just before Christmas.

That draft, which was leaked to the Daily Mail earlier this month, was scathing in its criticism of British Cycling, an organisation Cookson led from 1996 until his election as president of the International Cycling Union (UCI) in 2013.

The 65-year-old, however, was not asked to contribute and is understood to have been disappointed not to have been given a chance to defend the governing body's approach to athlete welfare and its governance.

A Freedom of Information Act request by Press Association Sport has revealed extensive correspondence between the boards of British Cycling, UK Sport and the independent review's chair Annamarie Phelps in the weeks after board members were given copies of the draft report.

In an email dated January 13, Phelps tells UK Sport she hoped her work was "all done" and asked if it had received the "final final report" from the panel's lawyer John Mehrzad.

She also mentions the panel "had done one more interview", which Press Association Sport understands to have been Cookson, and had made "a minor amendment to the report", as well as adding to the number of "submissions".

This last reference is understood to relate to several contributions the panel received after its original cut-off of November 30 from people with a more positive take on life within the Great Britain cycling team, as a lack of balance in the draft had been flagged up by British Cycling's board.

Cookson's intervention is an example of this but must also been seen in the context of his desire for another four-year term at the UCI. He has come under increasing pressure over the last six months as negative headlines have dogged both British Cycling and Team Sky, the hugely successful road cycling outfit he helped to launch in 2010.

When asked if he was concerned about the review into bullying and UK Anti-Doping's probe into alleged wrongdoing within the GB set-up and Team Sky, Cookson told Press Association Sport: "The inquiries are important to help our sport continue to learn from the past and move forward. However, as these inquiries are still ongoing, it would not be appropriate to comment on them at this time."

The amendments Phelps referred to on January 13, however, are far from being the last changes to the report, which is now nearly a year in the making and bogged down in legal disputes.

In the weeks after the completion of the "final final report", both British Cycling and UK Sport clashed over how much of it should be published, and in what form.

The original remit was that only a summary and key recommendations would be published but both parties decided that would not be enough, given the public interest, media scrutiny, vulnerability to FOI requests and likelihood of leaks.

One idea was to publish the full report with redactions but it was dismissed when board members realised this would mean pages of blacked-out text, so a new approach was suggested.

On February 6, Phelps wrote to UK Sport boss Liz Nicholl and British Cycling board member Marian Lauder, the report's co-commissioners, to say the panel was willing to consider "increasing the anonymised aspect" to protect those who contributed, ensure people are not deterred from speaking to future reviews and give those criticised the right to reply.

She wrote, however, that the report must still "faithfully reflect the findings" and "do justice" to what the panel had been told about the GB team's "culture". And she added that any further direction from the boards "would potentially undermine the independence of the report".

A day later, the British Cycling board met and Lauder wrote to Nicholl, Phelps and British Cycling president Bob Howden to say the governing body had decided it must "take positive action now" as "morale among staff is very low".

The board's suggestion, supported by UK Sport, was that Phelps would be asked to publish more than was originally requested, which would require extra work, and British Cycling should be allowed to reveal a 39-point response ahead of the report's publication.

On February 8, Lauder formally asked Phelps to start this work, which would include a legal process known as Maxwellisation, a formal right to reply for those criticised.

In Lauder's February 7 email, she wrote that the British Cycling board believed this would take "more like three months than one", and her February 8 email referred to "cost implications" and the approval of Phelps' request for an indemnity against litigation.

The Maxwellisation process is now over - with particularly strong responses received from former British Cycling performance director Sir Dave Brailsford, ex-chief executive Ian Drake and former technical director Shane Sutton - and the panel is trying to complete the report as soon as possible, although nobody is yet willing to put a date on its publication.