Safe Standing at Valley Parade

Does Edin know the football league don't subsidise ripping out the seats and make a safe standing area .

 

Edin has always being supportive of it. I can see us installing it should the government allow it

 

Wheres the £££££££££££££££££££££££££££ coming from ?.

 

Indeed. I doubt that Rahic and Rupp would pay for it themselves. It would probably come out of the playing budget like the pitch will

 

Or they are supporting it because it looks good to a section of the fans but in reality they know it will not happen any time soon so it does’t matter

 

Ouch. How much is a seated ticket?

 

A few points, as I understand them:

It is not directly illegal to stand in a seated area of a UK football ground under UK legislation.

When you buy a ticket, you have to comply with ground regulations or you are in breach of contract. The League has guideline ground regulations that say you should not stand in seated areas. Club regulations will probably all be near enough identical. Standing thus results in breach of contract and could possibly lead to you losing your contractual rights, i.e. you could be ejected and/or lose your ticket without compensation.

Safety certificates are issued by councils for grounds or individual stands. There are guidelines on fan density. Density for seated fans is actually higher than for unseated fans, who are allocated more width, so allowing fans to stand necessitates a greater space allocated. Allowing people to stand and not allocating more space could lead to withdrawal of the safety certificate and a stand or ground being closed down. (I presume this means new safe standing areas would be less dense, to the possible detriment of atmosphere.)

I do not know about insurance but strongly suspect the small print will indicate necessary compliance with ground regulations and safety certificates. If so, this would render the club uninsured if they did not routinely take reasonable steps to prevent people standing. Again, I do not know, but suspect that not being insured for an event would make holding it illegal in UK law. Thus, standing in a seated area of a football ground could well indirectly be technically illegal through lack of insurance if a club do not take reasonable steps to try prevent it.

This is all likely to be much like laws and regulations before the tragedies at City and Hillsborough. Lots of clubs and authorities were turning blind eyes or bending rules because there were "grey areas" or they were difficult or expensive to enforce. Loss-making clubs sometimes made plans to comply when they found the money and regulators did not want to shut down historic clubs if they felt it eventually might get done. It took tragedies to test the rules, show us where many clubs were not complying and the consequences it could bring. I took tragedies to encourage extra funding to be made available to achieve compliance. I hope standing in seated areas never gets tested in this way.

I am not really for or against building safe standing areas but fans in favour might want to consider that acoustics are pretty good at City and away fans regularly comment on the impressive noise is at bigger matches. Moving some fans into a new safe standing area with potentially lower density could spoil that in the same way encouraging City fans into the TL Dallas with discounted tickets did a few years ago, and out of the old Bradford End and onto the roofless Kop through a registration card scheme did in the 80s. Move the fans around after they have settled into the noisiest acoustic arrangement for any given ground and and you might actually kill the atmosphere rather than improve it.

More pressingly, the problem of conflict between standers and sitters at away matches really needs sorting since it causes regular fights. Is it really too much trouble to organise standers at the back and sitters at the front so everyone can be happy, which will likely add a bit to tickets sold and revenue received? I'm sure clubs could organise this - that is IF standing was NOT a breach of contract and possibly indirectly illegal. While standing is not allowed, they won't organise it. Could fans themselves encourage it, maybe? Legislation, contract law and hassle/money worries are still stopping clubs and regulators from sorting out a threat to safety!

 

Even the lower NW corner? Similar to what's in place at Celtic Park. Don't think lower TL would work. Perhaps one of the corners in the Kop, ala Rangers/Palace.

 

The gradient in the NW Corner is steeper than the surrounding stands

 

thats on the coast....a lot of nice towns that way

 

jpaul81 - I agree but think you might not get the end result you want. You could end up with a load singing their hearts out somewhere down by the pitch where acoustics are crap (and regulations as I understand them mean they are actually spaced out more than when they were sitting) and then get nothing happening behind them or anywhere else. Atmosphere killed. It might feel better where the singers are but the players would not get the same lift if the rest of the ground is quiet and an overall worse atmosphere could lead to lower ticket sales and playing budget. In some other grounds with a worse current set-up, new safe standing arrangements might give a better atmosphere. In other grounds, it might be worse. It's currently pretty good at Bradford and atmosphere has been complimented by away fans. I don't think our atmosphere is broken so I'd be wary about trying to fix it. The TL Dallas "fix" a few years back made it worse and was reversed. It might be a success if you got safe standing in K-block but I don't think they'll let you have it up there. I suspect safe standing elsewhere might give a worse result. Be careful what you wish for.

 

Incidentally, Celtic's rail seats are 500mm wide. Anybody know how wide City's seats are. I understand the average is around 460mm without arm rests.

 

Upstairs in exec area so cushion seats and arm rests it is 47cm from middle of armrest to middle of armrest

 

Depends where the safe standing goes though.

 

Safe standing has nothing to do with “ripping” seats out. They just put rails in front of them. It would work in the lower kop