Arsenal, Chelsea and Tottenham are set to be affected by the Government's latest update regarding safe standing in football stadiums.
Trials for safe standing for football fans in stadiums across the country have taken place over the past six months at five adopter grounds including Chelsea, Tottenham, Manchester City and Manchester United. Football clubs throughout the English pyramid have conducted fan surveys to understand the overall consensus of their supporters as to whether safe standing areas would be welcome back into stadiums.
This season’s FA Cup and League Cup finals at Wembley are set to feature safe standing sections after the Government gave top clubs the all-clear to open standing areas in their grounds. Now it seems the Government have approved the policy that will see licensed standing areas in football grounds make a comeback.
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The Government have released a statement announcing that licensed standing is now permitted in football stadia. The trial was independently evaluated, with the final evaluation report provided to Government confirming its decision to change policy.
Sports Ground Safety Authority (SGSA) will now be able to make a decision on whether to allow licensed standing areas, rather than needing Ministerial approval. Arsenal have since released a statement on their official club website, detailing the lengths the club went through in order to aid the research into safe standing at football matches.
Arsenal's statement read: "We have been in discussion with a Supporters’ Working Group on this subject since November last year and they were part of developing a survey we sent to ticket holders in May. We had a fantastic response to this survey with more than 16,000 supporters providing views.
"The reaction from our supporters reinforced some of the challenges introducing licensed standing presents at Emirates Stadium. Whilst the majority of our supporters (70%) are in favour of licensed standing being introduced, a minority (40%) actually want their seat to be in a licensed standing area.
"We understand these views and the broader debate around licensed standing across the game and are committed to exploring if and how it could be introduced at Emirates Stadium. However, we must be clear the introduction of licensed standing at Arsenal will not result in an increased capacity at Emirates Stadium as there must be one seat/space per standing person. As a club, we would also incur significant costs to implement licensed standing."
The statement went on to discuss the measures that will be taken to hurdle challenges still facing implementing safe standing at the Emirates Stadium. "We are now working through the best way to resolve the operational challenges. These include the following:
- defining a process for re-locating Season Ticket holders who do not wish to be in a safe standing area
- segregating the stadium bowl, concourse and turnstiles to avoid migration from non-standing areas to licensed standing areas, and determining resulting capacity loss and impact on supporters’ experience
- consulting our Safety Advisory Group about an application for licensed standing areas."
Chelsea and Tottenham are yet to release statements regarding the latest update offered by the Government, but both clubs were involved during the trial phase of the policy.
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