- April 17, 2018
- Posted by: SportsV
- Categories: Home News, Industry News, News, Press Releases
Following Tracey Crouch’s rejection of WBA’s rail seating plans and her claim that only a “vocal minority” of fans want safe standing, a petition calling for English Premier League and Championship football clubs to be allowed to introduce safe standing has secured the 100,000+ signatures required to have the matter considered for parliamentary debate.
The petition currently stands at 106,380 signatures, having been signed by fans from all over the country, as can be seen in the heat map:
http://petitionmap.unboxedconsulting.com/?petition=207040
Interestingly, support is particularly high on Merseyside, where, as you will recall, 88% of nearly 18,000 Liverpool fans voted in favour of rail seating last year and where Everton unveiled designs last week for their new stadium including an area of rail seating.
Among the fans who have signed the petition and publicly declared that they have done so are two Hillsborough family members, David Hughes and Lou Brookes.
As the petition is now at well over 100,ooo signatures, the UK government must consider the matter for debate.
Crystal Palace Football Club (CPFC) – who have just received approval for the redevelopment of the Main Stand at Selhurst Park – have also joined the growing list of clubs that have promoted the petition to their fans via social media.
Hitting the 100k target is particularly timely, as there is a Football Supporters All Party Parliamentary Group meeting in Westminster next Tuesday (May 1), at which the topic being discussed is safe standing and the main speaker will be Ronnie Hawthorn, Head of Safety, Security & Operations at Celtic, who will be talking about the success of their rail seat section.
Petition signed and/or shared by…
Clubs:
Brentford
Bristol City
Bristol Rovers
Crystal Palace
Derby County
Northampton Town
Norwich City
Peterborough United
Portsmouth
Wimbledon
Execs/owners (present or former):
Gavin Baldwin, CEO, Doncaster Rovers
Liam Scully, CEO, Lincoln City
Erik Samuelson, CEO, AFC Wimbledon
Alan Hardy, Owner, Notts Co.
Eric Eisner, Director, Portsmouth
Steve Stride (ex Ops Director, Aston Villa)
Players (present or former)
Lee Sharpe (ex Man Utd, Leeds Utd etc)
Stan Collymore (ex Forest, Liverpool etc)
Brian McClair (ex Man Utd)
David May (ex Blackburn, Man Utd etc)
Nigel Spink (ex Aston Villa)
Shaun Teale (ex Aston Villa)
Steve Jones (ex West Ham, Bournemouth)
International support
Alan Burrows, CEO, Motherwell FC
Daniel Lörcher, SLO, Borussia Dortmund
Celebs / Other sports people
Winston Marshall, Mumford & Sons
Anthony Crolla, boxer
Jon Darch, Operator of the Safe Standing Roadshow, said:
It’s fantastic to have hit 100k! This time a fortnight ago the petition had under 5,000 signatures, so to add 95,000 in just 14 days demonstrates that fans who support safe standing are not, as the sports minister claimed, just a “vocal minority”.
On many days over the last two weeks it was the fastest-growing petition (out of over 1,800!) on the government website. It was outpaced at times only by one supporting the claims of the Windrush generation, which rightly resulted in the PM making a statement in the House and meeting with Commonwealth leaders to address the issue. I hope that having now seen the extent of football fans’ passion about our particular issue, the government will similarly do us the courtesy of granting a full-length debate in the main chamber.
Safe standing is important to thousands and thousands of fans, as this petition shows, and deserves to be formally debated in parliament.
