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With positive feedback from the early safe standing trial that five clubs – four in the Premier League and one in the Sky Bet Championship – have participated in from January 2022, the West Ham United Supporters' Trust is inviting supporters to provide their views on the prospect of safe standing at the London Stadium.
The ‘Early Adopter Programme’ was intended to enable the Government to evaluate how successful licensed standing areas could be as a strategy to manage persistent standing. The Early Adopter Programme was implemented during the second half of the 2021/22 football season and has been subject to a formal independent evaluation. The evaluation has included a series of match-day visits to observe supporter behaviour and the implementation of safety management practices as well as interviews with a range of staff involved in managing safety at each club such as SGSA inspectors, section supervisors responsible for the licensed standing areas, supporter liaison officers and representatives from both the local police and Safety Advisory Group (SAG).
The report confirmed that installing barriers or rails in areas of persistent standing in seated accommodation continues to have a positive impact on spectator safety, particularly in mitigating the risk of a progressive crowd collapse by limiting forwards and backwards movement’.
The Interim Report has identified a number of further positive impacts of installing barriers or rails. These include: celebrations are more orderly with no opportunity for forwards and backwards movement; egress is more uniform because barriers limit spectators’ ability to climb over seats to exit more quickly; it is easier to identify pockets of overcrowding in these areas; and barriers offer stability for people moving up and down aisles and gangways.
The Interim Report also noted that operating licensed standing areas has the additional benefit of removing ‘the need for safety teams to make spectators sit down, reducing potential conflict between staff and spectators’ while also enhancing the match-day experience of spectators and customer service by enabling clubs to respond to spectators’ seating preferences. In addition, it has concluded that there is no evidence to date that the introduction of licensed standing areas has led to an increase in persistent standing elsewhere in the stadia.
These findings are supported by the local Safety Advisory Groups who are now typically supportive of safe standing.
WHUST have been liaising with our fellow supporters’ trusts from those clubs that are participating in the pilots. Some of their feedback suggests that before implementation an understanding of supporters feelings towards safe standing is important.
West Ham United as a club is supportive of the principle of safe standing, and we are keen to gain a better understanding of how important it is to us, the supporters, as we plan for the seasons ahead.
Polls of supporters have found significant public support for safe standing in recent years – however, these polls canvas general football supporters in most cases, and do not provide specific, or in-depth, data on the thoughts of West Ham United supporters.
By participating in our survey, you will provide us with important data to help us understand how much of a priority the implementation of safe standing is for West Ham fans, and give us better information on how best to work with the Club and relevant agencies that will be involved.
The survey is open to anyone that could potentially attend a match at the London Stadium - tell others about it.
Link to the survey:
https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/whust-safe-standing
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