Football stadia like others are having to adapt to a time of police austerity, and do more security for themselves. A report on one county and two football clubs shows how that is going.
Staffordshire Police’s response threat and risk connected to football events in the county is ‘highly advanced and requires no fundamental reform’, according to Prof Clifford Stott, from Keele University. Stott found some things that could be better, in planning before a match and operations on the match day, in and outside the stadium ‘footprint’ (which makes the topic of interest to publicans and city centre businesses generally). While outsiders might assume that the bigger club, Stoke City, would provide more security problems, the report shows the opposite; trouble outside the Port Vale ground, yet sparked it was suggested by ‘interactions during the event’, including some drug use.
Staffordshire’s Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC) Matthew Ellis commissioned the review by an academic on crowd safety to look at the effectiveness of the arrangements for policing local football matches.
The 39-page review, available on the PCC’s website, focused on Premier League team Stoke City and Football League side Port Vale and included visits to policed games at both clubs’ grounds, the Britannia Stadium and Vale Park respectively in late 2015.
Eighteen months before the review was announced, Ellis introduced new formal audit and appeal arrangements between local clubs and Staffordshire Police as part of rigour and transparency in deciding the level and costs of policing matches – long a bugbear between clubs and police forces.
He said: “Football policing has never been an exact science and the police have to make difficult judgements when assessing football intelligence from other forces and the numbers of officers required to ensure safety for everyone. At the same time, some non-Premiership football clubs work within tight budgets and face financial pressures on a weekly basis which means they need to keep policing costs for fixtures as reasonable and fair as possible.
“This independent review will provide a basis to improve consistency and provide Staffordshire Police and football clubs with the learning and development opportunities to improve policing football across Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent.”
The review was led by Stott, whose talk on football policing and stewarding of crowds at the eresponse conference on stewarding and event security was featured in our May 2016 issue.
Burton Albion was not included in the review, which took place before the club’s promotion to the Championship, as there were no ‘policed’ football matches at the club during the review period. However, the review’s recommendations have been shared and discussed with Burton Albion officials, the PCC’s office added.
