Jon Darch, Ferco Seating

UK safe standing trials are happening, but what does this mean for stadium operators and architects?

Images: Ferco Seating

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he recent announcement from London that trials of safe standing will be allowed in the Premier League and English Football League from January 2022 means exciting times ahead - and some challenges - for stadium operators and their architects. The success or otherwise of the trials will, to a large degree, depend on the design and layout of the infrastructure installed for this newlypermitted form of spectator accommodation. As a long-time campaigner for safe standing and, more recently, an agent for Ferco Seating, I look in this guest column at those design and layout issues - and, for instance, at how a row of 28 seats could end up providing safe standing space for just 23 fans. But, first, a step back in time. It’s January 1990. Responding to the Thatcher Government’s announcement of a ban on standing, the Shadow Home Secretary, Roy Hattersley, asks: “Should not the government be discussing with the football authorities the provision of a seat for every supporter who wants one and the creation of safe standing areas for those who do not?” Now, 32 years later, the Sports Ground Safety Authority has written in its set of criteria for participants in the trials: “From 1 January 2022, the UK Government will be implementing a historic change which will allow… safe standing.” So, what happened in between those two statements? And what do the impending trials mean for ground operators and their advisors? As can be seen from Roy Hattersley’s comments, there was immediate opposition to the standing ban. Indeed, the FA, the Football League and the then newly-formed Football Supporters Association had all spoken out against it the preceding months. Some years later, as the fans’ campaign built up momentum, Germany’s ‘Variositze’ (rail seats) began to emerge as a potential option for safe standing in England and Wales. As a German language graduate, I was asked by the organisers of the national campaign to speak to German clubs about these new-fangled seats. Was there anything in their design that would make them unsuitable for use in the UK? The Germans had invented ‘rail seats’ in the late 1990s. UEFA had decreed that all its club competition matches must henceforth be played in all-seater stadia. With many German grounds having huge banks of terracing, the member-controlled clubs were never going to deny their members the option to stand. So, they had to find a way of providing standing accommodation at the weekend for domestic games and of switching easily to an all-seater configuration for any midweek European match. So, they invented ‘Variositze’, variable seats. Key among the designers’ objectives for these seats were clearly strength to withstand the robust treatment sometimes meted out to stadium infrastructure in standing areas and maximum space for the fans when they were being used for their primary purpose of providing standing accommodation. They therefore designed the seats to fold up flush between slim but robust uprights, taking up just 50mm of the row depth. To prevent the seats from causing an obstruction when not in use, and to eliminate the risk of spectator injury caused by fans standing on the seats and falling off, they also incorporated a lock into the design, so that the seats could be secured upright and lowered only if unlocked by the ground operator ahead of a UEFA game. And, yes, there was no reason why these seats wouldn’t work in the UK. So, rail seats became a focal point of my work for the safe standing campaign. Ferco built me a four-seat ‘roadshow’ unit and I travelled up and down the motorways of Britain presenting the rail seat concept to club executives, safety experts, stadium architects, politicians, and supporters’ groups. The second ground I

visited was Celtic Park, and, in 2016, Celtic - not being subject to the Westminster government’s ban on standing - installed just shy of 3,000 rail seats, becoming the first club in the UK to create a rail seat safe standing area. South of the border, two years later, two significant events would have a major impact on the use and design of what the Sports Ground Safety Authority were now calling ‘seats incorporating barriers’: West Bromwich Albion were refused permission to install rail seats at The Hawthorns and a new edition of the Guide to Safety at Sports Grounds - aka the Green Guide - was published, specifying, for the first time, the conditions under which rail seats could be installed in English and Welsh stadia that were governed by the allseater policy. Rail seats, or ‘independent barriers’ behind conventional seats, would be allowed as a means of enhancing safety in areas where ground operators had an issue with persistent standing. Those areas would still be classified as areas of seating, but the rails would enhance fans’ safety if they stood for prolonged periods in breach of the ground regulations. However, rail seats of the style, by then being widely used all over Europe and at Celtic, would not be allowed. That was because it was ruled that a seat with a built-in mechanical lock could not be deemed ‘seated accommodation’ for the purpose of compliance with the all-seater policy. So, ‘rail seats’ without locks began to emerge. While these new hybrids did get around the ban on locks, their design went against one of the key objectives of rail seats for safe standing. Often featuring contoured plastic seats and backs, the new hybrid models took up a lot of seating row space. In some cases, they were more than six times the depth of the original rail seats. And so, we come to the present day and the publication of new guidelines for ‘safe standing in seated areas’. Echoing the objectives of those original German designers who aimed to provide the maximum possible space for standing fans, the Sports Ground Safety Authority says that while “seats incorporating barriers… should conform to the recommendations of Chapter 12 in the Green Guide”, i.e., those governing their use for enhancing safety in what nevertheless remain areas of seating, for safe standing “the following additional considerations should be noted… tip up seats will not be compatible with safe standing in a seated area if [inter alia] any element – for example the underside of the seat or its edges, or its fittings (such as its frame, hinges, or arm rests) – protrudes into the clearway to such an extent that the backward movement or lateral movement of spectators along the seating row is impeded”. The SGSA go on to say that due to standing fans in winter coats being c. 600mm wide and seats often being only 460mm wide, if the clearway depth left by any protruding elements makes it impossible for fans to stand slightly forward or backward of each other and they instead have to stand shoulder-toshoulder “those at each end of the seating row will inevitably encroach onto the radial gangways… This runs contrary to one of the basic principles of safety management at sports grounds and other places of public assembly; that all radial and lateral gangways be kept clear at all times”. In such event, the guidelines say that the capacity must be cut. In the example they use, they say that this should be by “at least five seats” per 28-seat row. More than a 17% capacity reduction. Clearly, no stadium operator wants to have to cut their capacity by even 1%, let alone 17%! So, innovative thinking was once again called for. The problem: the original rail seats provide the maximum possible space, but their built-in locks make them non-compliant. The hybrid models, with plastic seats and backs, have no lock and are thus compliant, but the space they take up can lead to capacity cuts. The answer: a new design that retains the space-saving DNA of the original, but with no offending lock. And that, if you’ll excuse a bit of selfpromotion, is exactly what Ferco’s new RailSeat Ultra delivers: the same 50mm closed depth, the same rugged steel design, no protruding parts, and no lock. To paraphrase what Roy Hattersley said back in January 1990, it is a design that enables operators of grounds governed by the new SGSA guidelines to provide a seat for every supporter who wants one and safe standing areas for those who do not. Without any loss of capacity. www.fercoseating.com