Safe Standing

Not sure if this has been mentioned but the Tories have rejected West Brom's proposal for a safe standing area. The proposal was made to try and improve safety in the ground after the usual concerns about supporters standing in seats. The charade of supporters standing in seating areas has gone on long enough IMO. It's time we were able to choose whether to stand or not. Can't help thinking there is a political motive behind it to continue the gentrification of football. There's more information in the link and a petition below

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/43704338

https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/207040

Why can't football clubs decide on issues such as this themselves? It is THEIR ground. The government gets itself involved in everything and it is sickening.

Works abroad and works in Scotland, but obviously too risky for the English. Stupid decision by people who know naff all about football.

Safe standing is not for me at my age but if there's an area dedicated to it.......I can't see an argument against it if it's safe ?

Standing was axed after the Taylor report as an understandable fix to a problem - the risk of crushing at a old depalidated grounds. The reality is in the nearly 30 years since Hillsborough the understanding of the science behind crowd behavior has been radically transformed and we now know how to operate a safe system of standing.

The tory response makes no sense (and runs counter to them cutting red tape which they bang on ad nauseum about ). I've been in safe standing areas and frankly its much safer than pretty much every music gig ive ever been too.

The decision by Tracey Crouch beggars belief considering she refused a safe standing application in a football ground and just hours later went and opened a standing area in a rugby ground!

The evidence is incontrovertible - rail seating is safe, and a much safer option than what we currently have. I’ve lost count of the times I’ve gone over seats in goal celebrations. I missed Bogle’s second at Wembley as I was helping some poor kid, no older than 7, who’d been flattened and knocked over the row in front celebrating the first goal.

Crouch claims that the way to manage persistent standing is through crowd management. She’s clearly never watched either a handful of stewards waving their arms to get thousands of paying customers to sit down, or a group of overzealous bully-boy stewards drag customers out of the ground for having the temerity to stand up.

The Tories are playing politics with the safety of football fans, again, and we deserve better. Will it take a death before she takes her head out of the sand? She’s ignored the government’s own safety experts in SGSA and even the Football Safety Officers Association has this evening condemned her actions.

It’s not about forcing people to stand if they don’t want to - it’s about offering the choice for people who do.

I’d urge everyone to sign the petition - over 30k people have signed it today alone, but there have been only 37 signatures from Grimsby and 38 from Cleethorpes.

https://t.co/EhLb9cS8Os

Signed.

Just watched the video on the BBC page Vance Warner posted

Who's going to go round locking and unlocking every single seat? It's going to be a very time consuming job, unless you can do it row by row, but even then it would be time consuming, I have a feeling that clubs will tend to leave the seats locked in the "sitting" position all the time rather than changing it depending on the game in question as lifting the seats to the "standing" position will take a lot of time.

I do support the idea, but the thought of somebody going round with a key locking and unlocking every seat does make me unsure and I think clubs will find that very time consuming and it would be far easier to leave the seats in the "sitting" positions all the time.

Quoted from Davec

I do support the idea, but the thought of somebody going round with a key locking and unlocking every seat does make me unsure and I think clubs will find that very time consuming and it would be far easier to leave the seats in the "sitting" positions all the time.

I don't see why that would be necessary unless a club is playing in Europe (unless I'm missing something...). The top German teams have the standing position in domestic games and then change to sitting for European games because rules dictate that. Surely an English team who is not in Europe take a decision to have rail seating in an area for a season, set in the standing position and not need to change it all season?

Quoted from pizzzza

I don't see why that would be necessary unless a club is playing in Europe (unless I'm missing something...). The top German teams have the standing position in domestic games and then change to sitting for European games because rules dictate that. Surely an English team who is not in Europe take a decision to have rail seating in an area for a season, set in the standing position and not need to change it all season?

You never know what the police and other authorities are like, the FA could make up some ridiculous rule.