Football clubs should pay to police matches, not the taxpayer, says top constable

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FT Desk

United Kingdom's football policing lead says clubs need to foot the bill for police security during matches, not the taxpayers.

The current agreement whereby Premier League clubs are not responsible for policing expenses outside stadiums "simply cannot continue", according to Chief Constable Mark Roberts.

Home Office figures show that incidents were recorded at 1,644 matches across England and Wales last season, marking the highest total since the UK Football Policing Unit (UKFPU) began collecting the data in the 2017-18 campaign.

"Football-related crime doesn't simply stop when fans exit the stadium, but under the current system multi-billion-pound football clubs do not have to pay a penny towards the policing outside their grounds," he said, as quoted by the BBC.

"This means that taxpayers are left footing the £70m bill each season, which simply cannot continue."

Roberts' remarks follow the release of new figures showing a rise in the most serious incidents at football matches last season.

A total of 159 incidents were categorised as "high severity", representing a significant increase from the 106 recorded during the previous campaign.

However, Geoff Pearson, a law professor at the University of Manchester and an expert in crowd behaviour, says the latest figures are not a cause for concern.

Pearson notes that reported incidents should not be confused with football-related arrests or other police interventions, which actually declined to 1,963 last season compared with the previous campaign. He suggests the rise in reported incidents may instead reflect clubs adopting better reporting technology and more effective recording systems.

"If there had been a 50% increase in high severity incidents, I would expect violent disorder to have gone up, not down," the professor said.

"When lockdown happened in this country the British police continued to improve their practices. When there was that uptick in disorder across the world in football, the British police need to be commended to sticking to their guns and introducing things like safe standing.

"These statistics point to the reward of them doing that."

A Premier League spokesperson said: "The Premier League and its clubs work closely with police forces at a national and local level to ensure safe and welcoming environments for all fans.

"We are investing more than £90m a season in stewarding, security, crime prevention in communities and a series of technology-led pilots in partnership with a number of police forces and the UKFPU.

"This partnership approach will help the police to safely reduce the demand for policing around football matches, as the number of arrests continue to fall significantly over the last decade."

There has been an increase in online hate crimes over the past year, with 405 reported over the last 12 months that are football-related, an increase from 234 from the previous year.

From the most common football-related arrest offence types, public disorder was highest (38%), followed by violent disorder (19%) and the possession of class A drugs (17%).