Item 6 Appendix A

Culture, Sport and Tourism Committee Football Forum

1 September 2003

Transcript Meg Hillier (Chair): Good evening ladies and gentlemen. Can I welcome you to our Football Forum at the London Assembly? This follows on from a report we did, Away From Home, which we published back in June. Since then we have had responses from most of you in this room and others as well. We felt it would be useful to bring everyone together to debate some of the issues.

The first half, the main part of the session will be looking at the planning issues that we highlighted in our report. We will then have a bit of a change around of the panel here and move to look at some of the issues about residents and supporters’ involvement for the second part. Before we move into the planning issues we are going to touch on some of the other issues and I am asking that some members of the panel chip in here. Perhaps it would be a good idea to introduce everybody who is here.

I will start from my right with Chris Gamble. Chris is from the Independent Football Commission and has travelled all the way from Middlesbrough to be with us tonight, so thank you very much for that Chris. Next to her is Steve Dawson, the Chief Executive of Leyton Orient Football Club, which has agreed plans for redevelopment, which were agreed by the local authority and Mike Kelly is from the London Borough of Waltham Forest, he is the Head of Planning there. They are going to talk a bit about how that has worked for them. Immediately to my right is Nic Coward, who is the Director of Legal and Corporate Affairs at the Football Association, and was of course Acting Chief Executive for a time, so he has been in that hot seat.

I am Meg Hillier and I chair the London Assembly’s Culture, Sport and Tourism Committee and we were the committee that considered this report. It is a cross-party committee of six members of the Assembly. To my left is Alan Keen MP. Alan is Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Football Group and, I think it is fair to summarise, a sporting nut and a strong Brentford supporter so there is a bit of a Brentford presence on the platform here tonight. To his left is Giles Dolphin, who is the Chief Planner here at the Greater London Authority, so when the Mayor makes a key planning decision it is Giles and his team that are heavily involved in giving him advice about that. He is very au fait with most of the issues that we are debating here tonight. To his left is Roger Hepher. Roger is the Planning Consultant to many clubs – not just in football – but he has been particularly involved with the Arsenal planning application, which we will touch on because that has been a very complex one, as many people here will be aware. Immediately to his left is Eddie Rogers, the Chairman of Brentord. We will not go into the issues about Brentford because we will cover those a little later on.

We started looking at this very issue because of Wimbledon FC going to Milton Keynes. Obviously that is an issue that is still live and we felt there was a need to look at this matter because eight out of London’s 12 clubs were looking to relocate or redevelop. During our inquiry we visited Leyton Orient, Charlton Athletic and were hosted by the Football Foundation at Spurs. We learnt quite a lot in those visits and we also had

Culture, Sport and Tourism 1 23 September 2003 evidence from a number of clubs, including Brentford, Wimbledon and Fulham, and from supporters, including supporters from Fulham’s ‘Back to the Cottage’, represented here by Tom Greatrex, and from a number of other supporters’ groups and residents’ groups, particularly from Islington and Fulham as well.

I want to move on to our first recommendation because I am going to whizz through. You should have had a short sheet; if you have not it should be lying around. It summarises some of the key responses we have received – it is a four-page document that will give you the key headlines. The aim of tonight’s debate is not to go into too much detail on some of those responses. They are all available as a public document and the transcript of this evening’s proceedings will be available in about a month’s time but on the website in hard copy if you need it. Everything we say tonight is recorded as a transcript, I warn all of those on the platform particularly, but any of you who speak from the floor with a roving mike, your comments will likewise be recorded so I would ask that everybody identify themselves and, if appropriate, name the organisation that they are representing as well.

Perhaps if we can move on to the slide of our first recommendation, which was asking the London Development Agency to measure the stadiums’ impact. The LDA, I am happy to say, are considering this at a board meeting next week; slightly more limited than we suggested, they are looking to highlight successful projects that bring positive economic and social benefits for local communities and try to establish better practice. I think that is a start and I count that as something of a success and the Football Association feel that this would be a valuable exercise as well.

I am going to go through the first three recommendations and I am then going to ask Alan Keen and Nic Coward to come back with their quick responses to those before we move on to the main panel. We also highlighted the issue of travel to stadiums. This has been a particular burning issue, I know, for Spurs and it is quite a big part of Brentford’s plans and Arsenal have put a lot of money into transport. We recommend that analysis be done of how the services work for each stadium. Transport for London are going to be working with clubs, they told us, to develop travel plans and are doing quite a lot in this respect, so we feel that some good stuff is coming out there already. The FA responded that they felt that we, as a committee, or the Assembly should look at the current state of readiness of transport around Wembley. This is perhaps an issue that we will not go into in detail tonight but that is an interesting and valid point because we are aware that there are issues around Wembley as well.

We made a recommendation around policing stadiums, which we did not make in great detail because we had not, frankly, looked into the issue of policing in great detail. We chose not to because we were looking at a wider range of issues. Our colleagues on the Metropolitan Police Authority are looking at this and of course it is a wider national issue. I am sure Nic Coward will want to come in on that. There were quite strong feelings coming from supporters as well.

Rather than going into those in detail with all the panel members, if I could ask Alan Keen to explain the work that his group is doing and perhaps to come back on any of those points and then Nic to come in. Then we will open it to the floor for quick comments on those areas of interest. Alan?

Alan Keen MP, Chair, All Party Football Group: Thanks Meg, I will be as brief as I can because it is an evening for everybody, not just us on the panel. If I could just

Culture, Sport and Tourism 2 23 September 2003 correct something slightly because Brentford people are looking at me a bit suspiciously. Nobody believes what Members of Parliament say anyway but Brentford come before Middlesbrough reserves as my favourite team but just after Middlesbrough itself and it is worth telling you one little story. I was sitting at home only 50 metres from the corner of Brentford’s ground one Sunday lunchtime and my wife, who is the actual MP for Brentford, was campaigning in the Euro elections – do not ask me why I was not – and I got a phone call from a man saying ‘please ring Brentford’ and I am supposed to be there in five minutes to present some prize – a raffle prize he thought it was. So I rang Brentford and they said ‘where are you Alan?’ I said ‘I am sitting at home’. They said ‘get yourself round here and do it’. So I go round there and, to my horror, because I knew I would be in trouble when Ann got home, it was not a raffle prize or anything but the Third Division trophy to the team. As I am walking across the grass, there are about 3,000 people there on this ‘fun day’ they were having on a Sunday. About halfway across, Peter, who does the PR stuff there, said ‘delighted to have Alan Keen, the Member of Parliament for Feltham and Heston, he is a very strong Brentford supporter’ and I am thinking ‘this is going to do me good at the next election’. He then said ‘unless Middlesbrough are within 200 miles’.

First of all, can I congratulate Meg and the GLA for looking at football and its connection with communities like this, because that is what I think it is all about. Again, the inquiry that we are doing in Parliament on football and its finances is not us trying to tell the football world what to do – and I am sure it is the same in the GLA – it is an attempt to give everybody an opportunity to put their evidence together so that everyone in football, in this case in London in the GLA’s case, can look at the problems, address them and come back and take everything into account in the way it should be, including residents – and I am a member of the Griffin Park Residents’ Association as well as supporting Brentford. It affects residents; it affects the community and it is vital that we all look at this together. For too much time in the past, and the evidence is there for everyone to see, football has kept itself very much in its own cocoon and did not want any interference from outside.

However, everybody has come to realise over the last few years that football is really part of the community or certainly should be. Football can only benefit – even the Premier League teams with a lot of money. There are not many who are in the black in their bank accounts, even in the Premier League, but even those clubs are beginning to realise that they need to be part of the community as well.

Recommendation one I obviously agree with wholeheartedly. I tried to get to your hearing at Spurs and I foolishly tried to drive from the house and I was two hours and still had not got there. I do not need to say any more about that.

The third one: the policing and the charging. I have already had a meeting with the then minister in the Home Office because there is no question about it football should be treated no differently from any other sport and there has been no attempt from the Police to charge other sporting events for the policing in the town itself. Within the ground, yes, that is fine. However, football should not be treated differently just because it appears to a lot of people that there is a lot of money in the game. As I have already said, there are probably only two clubs who are in the black, even in the Premier League. If you looked at the debts of the clubs to assess whether you should charge them for policing then you would not be charging many clubs anyway.

Culture, Sport and Tourism 3 23 September 2003 To be fair, football should be treated like every other game, so I agree with the reservations about that and I have already started to bring whatever pressure I can on my own committee, where there are 150 members of the all-party Football Group in Parliament. We are trying to use that weight to make sure that the Government and the Police do not take more money from football, certainly in that unfair way.

Meg Hillier (Chair): Thank you Alan. Nic?

Nic Coward, Director of Corporate and Legal Affairs, Football Association: Can I join Alan and say this is a report that we really welcome. There are very few occasions on which we see formal local or national government reports coming out and saying so many things with which we agree, the prime one in this case being your recognition of the fact that clubs are different. This is something that we generally feel about clubs. I am talking about clubs at every level and that is a point we make in the report.

This report highlights the professional game and we at the FA are obviously responsible for 40,000 clubs and what we say applies for the big professional clubs should also apply for local clubs, which the Football Foundation – you have got them here in the shape of Alistair Bennett at the back there – look after to a great degree together with ourselves and county football associations. The key point is that football can create communities, we think, like nothing else. Whether you are talking about the fans of a professional club and the coming together of a community in London - we look at the issue of the open-top bus tour, which is a very current issue for Arsenal, i.e. not having one at the end of last season, which was an interesting change which you highlighted in your report. The local community on the one hand, the fans, wanted to have one but the local community on the other were perhaps not so keen. However, what we utterly believe is that football can pull people together: it can create, as I say, it can build communities, it can promote communities. It can, in combination with public authorities, create so much opportunity for promoting social good, whether it be study centres or people just coming together to create a club because they love football. Then that creates a coming together and all the benefits that we see linking through to schools, which is a key initiative we think government has rightly put as a priority. We think that this report has got to be welcomed for that point alone.

As I say, we would like your study to move down to lower levels. I just counted them up and in the London boroughs down to the Isthmian League and the Southern League, but mostly the Isthmian League, there are 50-plus clubs in London, all of whom have their own stadium – that is the line which we drew. This is not just an issue about those clubs – this is 50-plus clubs who have stadia and I would not want people to forget that fact because the emotion, passion and love for a club that you might see at a professional club is absolutely replicated at a club further down the national league system, so we would urge you to widen out that review.

We would also urge you to widen out that review into that wider analysis of the economic and public benefit that can apply through football clubs – not just pounds, shillings and pence but looking at, as I highlight, the work that is carried out through the Foundation, which I know you saw and were impressed by at Spurs when they showed you the work that can be done by a professional club and that is, again, replicated lower down the system.

Transport. Wembley is obviously an issue that the FA, as the ultimate owner of Wembley, would always highlight on an occasion like this. We are getting tremendous

Culture, Sport and Tourism 4 23 September 2003 support from the LDA. What we are looking for with them though is that we want it to be said, quite rightly, that we have the best stadium in the world when we open it at the back end of 2005 and beginning of 2006. A key issue is transport and Alan Keen said he has just come back from Paris for the athletics. Transport is a very important issue and another agency of government, the Office of Government Commerce, have just said that the one issue that needs to be looked at, and looked at carefully, is transport.

Everything else is going to plan, on track and on budget, but everyone needs to come together to ensure that the transport is absolutely right for the world’s best stadium. Moving that out to other stadia across the London area, of course transport is a massive issue and we think that you quite rightly highlight that.

Policing is a complex issue. Our position is very clear. As Alan said, it is not just football being treated differently to other sports, it is football not being treated differently to any of the other fantastic cultural activities for which this city is famous throughout the world. We have just been through the August bank holiday weekend and the Notting Hill Carnival. There is absolutely no way I could say that football should be distinguished from great events such as that. This is very much our case; we create, through all the clubs, fantastic benefits for the city, pulling in income and creating good. There is a recognition from the Metropolitan Police, with whom we have a great operational working relationship, that we, football, do at these many levels create all these incredibly powerful tools for promoting good practice for social inclusion. Youth Justice Board initiatives, which are rolling out now are very real ways in which football can help and this debate with the Metropolitan Police is, I am sure, not over but I think we have a process ongoing with them through which I am sure in good time they will come to an understanding that what we are saying is right that football is not different and football is actually contributing massively to the community so that there should be no issue of further charging.

Meg Hillier (Chair): Thank you very much for that Nic. I do not know if there are any quick comments from the floor on these issues. As I say, the main part is going to be planning and resident and fan involvement. Gentleman there, if you could stand up and say who you are and if you are representing anybody.

Participant: My name is Ian and I am a Tottenham fan, not representing anybody. Obviously the main thing for White Hart Lane, as Alan mentioned, is transport. As part two says, you are going to be looking into the exit patterns etcetera. I just wondered when those studies are going to be? Roughly, as a timescale.

Meg Hillier (Chair): Okay, in terms of the work of Transport for London, there is somebody from Transport for London here, I believe. Perhaps he would be best placed to answer that particular point.

Sam Richards, Head of Land Use Planning, Transport for London: Good evening, I am Sam Richards from Transport for London, Head of Land Use Planning. To pick up the specific question about Tottenham and also to talk for a little bit about investment in improving transport facilities for football clubs, London Underground have done some work on that specific proposal, which is to extend the Victoria Line to Northumberland Park for Spurs. Large scale infrastructure investments like that are very expensive of course and to do something like that for a football club without having a really strong argument for doing it in terms of regeneration as well is a very difficult thing to put forward. We are meeting with Haringey Council – we met them last week

Culture, Sport and Tourism 5 23 September 2003 actually – and we are going to continue to meet them and the football club to talk about what we can do. Such a large-scale improvement is, as I say, very expensive and there are small-scale improvements we can do to connect the stations that are round about Spurs to the ground, for example new bus links. I think we can take things forward like that. I would point to the smaller scale, less expensive things that TfL can do for clubs, like the improvement we are looking at to Upton Park station for West Ham and the improvements we are putting in for Fulham Broadway for Chelsea and we have also worked very hard with Arsenal to make their development happen as well. Of course, we are also doing a lot of work on Wembley at Wembley Park station to deliver that improvement in time for the opening of the new stadium. We are always ready to talk to clubs and supporters as well about those very large-scale improvements but those ones which involve extending a tube line are particularly difficult; it is a very expensive improvement.

Meg Hillier (Chair): Thank you very much. Any other quick points?

David Kierle, Project Director, White Hart Lane Project: My name is David Kierle and I am Project Director for the White Hart Lane Project. There are two things I would like to say: one is we have already started the transportation studies, in terms of exit and crowd numbers; but, more importantly, I am actually very disappointed to hear that it is only the smaller projects that TfL can consider. I think the proposal to extend the Victoria Line was based primarily on regeneration in the Northumberland Park area and not for Tottenham on a match day. That is something that we are meeting with the LDA and Haringey on Wednesday to talk about further. I would actually advocate that that should be looked at very strongly, not from a football club point of view but from an area point of view.

Meg Hillier (Chair): Can I just say that I do not want to get too bogged down in the Northumberland Park issue? It obviously has a particular interest for some people but we need to try and talk about the general issues.

Patrick Alcorn, Transport for London: I am Patrick Alcorn, I also work for Transport for London – I am the Travel Plan Coordinator there and part of the response to the recommendations actually refers to travel plans. I would just like to say that where it says TfL plan we aim to establish those because it is a cooperative procedure and a cooperative measure. We need to be working with the clubs and we need to develop that in partnership. Where clubs come forward and we can actually get that started, that is fine; but if the clubs cannot take that forward at this time then there is nothing we can do individually. However, we are more than willing to talk to any of the 50-plus clubs with stadia about what we can do to help them.

Meg Hillier (Chair): Great, so the message is that the clubs should not sit back and wait for you to come to them – and the fans, supporters and residents as well, presumably.

Patrick Alcorn, Transport for London: Exactly.

Meg Hillier (Chair): Great, okay. Any points on issues other than transport?

Nick Blackburn, Chairman, Queens Park Rangers: Nick Blackburn, Chairman of QPR. I listened to what you said about community and the importance of clubs in their community. I support that wholeheartedly, but these schemes cost money and I think

Culture, Sport and Tourism 6 23 September 2003 the youth schemes that clubs operate is also very important. I just want to know if Alan Keen and Nic Coward are aware that the Government has still not met its commitments to pay out all the money for youth schemes this year? Despite letters of assurance from the Government, they have not done that. Equally, I think you notice it when you travel outside London to play clubs – we played Chesterfield on Saturday and we were talking about the help they get from their local council. Their local council loaned them £183,000 interest free to meet their creditors’ obligations over the next two years. If you go to Barnsley, there is an amazing building at Barnsley where they have helped build grounds for the youth team and so on.

I think one of the problems that the councils do not recognise in London is the importance of the local team to the community – they do not really see that. You see it far more when you go outside London and you see one team, one town. I think it is a real problem we face here and there is very little support from the councils. They pay lip service to community; they paid lip service when we had someone buying QPR, who said they might move the ground and all the local councillors came out, I think, looking for votes, saying ‘ we are not going to allow that’. However, we never hear from them during the season and I think it is much harder in London and the real job that you could do is to make councils aware of what the importance of the clubs is in their local communities. Could you answer the question about government funding?

Meg Hillier (Chair): I think we will answer that question at the end. Gentleman at the back there and then Steven Powell and then I am going to draw a line there because we do need to move on.

John Williams, Football Research Centre: Thanks, John Williams from the Football Research Centre. I think it is a bad mistake to commission research just to look at the benefits of football stadiums. You have to look at the impact of stadiums because already you are flying a particular kind of flag, especially because of the nature of some of the London clubs and some of the locations in which they are placed now the lack of connection between those clubs and their immediate local communities is very clear. There is also a kind of racial social exclusion around particular large London clubs and there is nothing said about race in the report, which I think is very good, but there are no particulars about that special form of social exclusion is included here.

If we are going to look at benefits for local communities we have to be aware that the communities that football clubs build also exclude, and very often exclude the people that live immediately adjacent to their grounds. That is one of the reasons why the debate about communities has to be integral to the planning process, not delivered in terms of best practice and not something which is on the outside or on the edge of what might happen, but it has to be central to the planning issue. Otherwise the dis- benefits for the many people who live around some of the clubs here are going to continue to multiply. They are not involved as fans, they are not seen as consumers, they cannot afford to go to the matches of the very large clubs and they do experience serious disbenefits at the moment and that is not always rectified by having a good community scheme. I think, talking more widely about impact rather than benefits is a good idea.

Meg Hillier (Chair): John, I believe you have travelled all the way from Leicester to be with us tonight.

John Williams, Football Research Centre: It is not very far.

Culture, Sport and Tourism 7 23 September 2003

Meg Hillier (Chair): It is good to welcome a few non-Londoners as well because it shows the importance of the issues. Steven Powell and then I am going to draw a line unless people have any quick one-line comments to make.

Steve Powell, Arsenal Independent Supporters Association/Football Supporters’ Federation: My name is Steve Powell and I am attending in two capacities this evening: first of all as a representative of Arsenal Independent Supporters’ Association and secondly as Head of Development for the Football Supporters’ Federation. We get regular approaches from clubs with problems at all levels, as Nic Coward has said, and it is perhaps unsurprising that it is the clubs that are not the glamour clubs, that have got the big clout, that have got the biggest problems. To give you one example, a couple of years ago I was asked to attend a meeting of the Planning Committee of Southwark Council by Dulwich Hamlet supporters who were having problems there.

I think if we talk about the professional game, given that there is no divide anymore between the professional and the amateur in terms of playing status, we need to talk about football clubs, their communities and their stadia, rather than just the four fully professional divisions. There are Barnet supporters here this evening who have got major headaches and problems with their local authority and their ground, and they have had them for a large number of years. If you relate what actually happens to what should happen and the report after report after report and you take the late Lord Justice Taylor’s report, he made it quite clear that, if clubs are to remain in their communities and they are to be able to build safe, appropriately-sized stadia, then this needs to be account taken in the planning permission. However, what happens in this country is that all of those fine words go out of the window and it becomes a battle between some local residents, who do not want the football club and would rather it goes, and a miasma of planning regulations.

I think the problem we have got in London is one thing I would like to particularly highlight. I thought, when I voted in a referendum to have a mayor and an assembly, that they would have the say. What has in fact happened is that now in London, if you have a big planning application like Arsenal, you have to go through three levels – you have to go to your local authority, you have to go to the Mayor and then the Government is still going to take a long time. In fact, the Government is still sitting on the compulsory purchase orders for part of Arsenal’s ground – it is now October, we are told. It is torture. Nobody is going to tell me that we have a better-built environment in London as a result of our tortuous planning laws than they do in other countries in Europe.

In terms of stadium development, the future is the inner city. If you look at all the stadium developments in Europe – or most of the stadium developments in Europe and North America – the benefit is recognised and I think I would welcome that work that the LDA is going to do. Of course it should be about impact for local residents but let us get it right: most local residents – I appreciate that there are some that do not – but most local residents choose to live next to a stadium and they move in with their eyes open. They are going to have to accept that there is that inconvenience to being next to a stadium. That said, one of the things I would like to see come out of this process is engagement between supporters and residents because it is certainly totally hostile at the moment at Arsenal and I wish that would change. I am a resident activist as well. I

Culture, Sport and Tourism 8 23 September 2003 chair my local tenants and residents’ association so I do get it. Let us see if we can bring that together as well as part of this process in the future.

Meg Hillier (Chair): Thank you, Steve. I think you have opened up lots of avenues that people that might want to come back on, but rather than open up that debate now we are going to be looking at that at a little [inaudible] planning and resident involvement and we will try to deal with it then. There are a couple of people indicated, if you can be very brief, we will take a couple of quick comments and I think Alan Keen needs to come back on one or two of those.

Peter Leaver, Charlton Athletic Supporters’ Club: Peter Leaver, Charlton Athletic. I am just a little bit concerned that the future planning for policing is bubbling up quite happily in the background and it is going to affect clubs and supporters because someone is going to have to foot the bill. I do find it bad that, yet again, the majority of clubs will probably land up having a decision taken on their behalf so it will be a standard decision for all clubs when they do not have so much trouble when there are known clubs that do have a lot of problems and this will still not be addressed. I think the FA have dragged their feet on this for a number of years. They have stood on boxes and said ‘we are against it’ and then they just fine a club the price of a cup of coffee sometimes when it does happen. I think it is still going to be a major issue because it is community. The majority of people will say they want the area better policed when the football match is on, so I do not think we should just assume that it is going to travel along in its own little way. It is going to hit us between the eyes very quickly. I think we should address it and, as I have said, I think the FA should look at the way they address clubs that are known to have this problem. Thank you.

Meg Hillier (Chair): Thank you. On the policing issue, I know that the Metropolitan Police Authority is looking into this and I am having discussions with my colleague Lord Toby Harris, who chairs that, about whether we as a committee look at that as well. It is not just about football policing, it is about all major events in London and there are a lot of issues there but there is no point in duplicating the work where, as Alan has highlighted, he has been having discussions and there are discussions going on. I think what we are taking away from what you have said and what others have responded is that this is an issue that needs to be looked at. Whether it is appropriate for us to do that or it is better dealt with by other bodies is the question and that is how we will deal with it. Alan, did you want to come back? I do not know if you can comment.

Alan Keen MP, Chair, All Party Football Group: Yes, to Nick Blackburn. I did not know that it had still not been paid, Nick. I will certainly take it up through the All- Party Football Group but could I suggest that there is a more effective way even than that? I will still do that but you have got a number of MPs that you can claim have QPR supporters in their constituencies and you could get together with other clubs and approach a number if MPs – from around the country as well – and if letters and approaches are made to the Sports Minister from a large number of Members of Parliament separately, even those who are not members of my group, I do think he has got something to do with that. I have been in a meeting with him where this was discussed.

Nic Coward, Director of Corporate and Legal Affairs, Football Association: I know that he knows that he has not paid it because we keep reminding him that he has not paid it and it is a wider point that we will be saying to Alan and his working group that actually we believe, and I think Alan and his parliamentary group will agree, that

Culture, Sport and Tourism 9 23 September 2003 government is all its forms needs to get much more serious about its funding of sport, in comparison, say, to the arts. We have got a Minister for Sport, who unfortunately does not have the budget to carry out these undertakings in the time. It is not his fault. He gets squeezed and does not have the budget that he really wants to allocate to sport. Our job is to try to get Alan and his 150 colleagues and the GLA and everyone, frankly, to agree with us that actually this needs to be turned round and government needs to get much more serious about its strategic view of sport and what it can do and what the partnership can be between government and the private sector in whatever sport to deliver great benefit. That means government actually taking a better view, having a plan and implementing it.

To take the Charlton view, we know absolutely the issues that Charlton and other clubs are facing. Anyone who has been in the meetings and full and frank exchanges that we have had with the Metropolitan Police over the years will know that there is no feet- dragging going on. These are difficult issues and a club like Charlton has invested an enormous amount of money in ensuring that Charlton is a police-free stadium. Why is that? It is because they have invested a massive amount in making that stadium a fantastic stadium, a safe stadium with CCTV and stewarding – everything we now expect at that particular level.

What we now have to address is the fact that, as Alan highlighted, we absolutely accept that, on private property, at a football ground, that is the responsibility of the club and the club will be paying the policing cost for that. It moves into an entirely different environment – and it is an environment that Meg Hillier and the GLA have got to look at – where a local authority, for instance, is now in control of licensing laws and where a local authority, which is obviously the planning authority makes these long-term decisions on infrastructure for an entire community, whether it be shopping or, as I say, the pub opening. Whatever it is, that all has a policing impact, which we in football cannot control and cannot be expected to control and cannot be expected to pay for, other than what we already pay for as a contributor to the rates and local and national taxes.

Meg Hillier (Chair): Thank you. The policing debate is going to be one that rages and I have suggested how we are looking at trying to tackle that. I want to actually move on, because time is marching on, to the issue about planning regulation. We made a recommendation that the Mayor should give additional weight in the London Plan to local sporting heritage. In the London Plan, for example, if the Mayor – and I am sure Giles Dolphin will correct me if I summarise poorly – has to consider a planning application around a national stadium such as Wembley, Wimbledon or Lords or whatever the sporting facility may be, that needs to be taken into account. There is no such requirement for local sporting heritage and we suggested that that needed to be looked at. The response was that this was covered already in the London Plan and I wondered if Giles could explain the response to those of us here.

Giles Dolphin, Planning Decisions Manager, Mayor Planning: The response does look a bit mealy-mouthed the way it was written. I think you need to understand that the Mayor was just going into his public inquiry into the London Plan at the time and was offering no changes to anything. We were being bombarded by requests to change just about every sentence and paragraph of the London Plan so I am afraid it just got caught up in the general standstill on changes. However, it does not really matter because the Mayor is totally behind the principles involved in your proposed changes.

Culture, Sport and Tourism 10 23 September 2003 If I could just explain the Mayor’s planning powers, because maybe some of you do not totally understand them. The Mayor can only deal with the very big schemes in London - probably about 300 planning applications a year out of a total of 70,000. Furthermore, he only has the power to compel borough councils to refuse planning permission. He was not given the power by the Government to compel borough councils to grant planning permission. If he did have that power, I think we can be pretty sure that the [knot in my backyard?] attitude to football stadium improvements would not last for much longer in London because the Mayor is absolutely adamant that having good stadia is good for London and is good for promoting London. I made the point to him once, when we were talking about how football promoted London he felt that football meant lots of hooligans and that was how foreigners saw London. I said ‘well, actually it is not’ – there are 1,000 million people in China and if you showed them a photo of Ten Downing Street, the Palace of Westminster or the Tower of London, 99% of them would not know what on earth they were. However, if you showed them a photograph of Highbury Stadium, they would all know exactly where it was because, right into the very depths of China they see Highbury, White Hart Lane and other stadia week in week out live on their televisions. Football is incredibly Important in terms of promoting London.

I think the Mayor, by his record, has shown that he responds very positively to planning applications to improve stadia and the Arsenal case is obviously the biggest and most important one. I think Islington Council wanted all along to grant permission but I do not think they would have done if they had not had the Mayor pushing them as firmly, strongly and positively as he did. I think the Mayor took an extremely flexible attitude to many of the policies in his own London Plan in order to allow the Arsenal development to go ahead. It is not just the big ones – he has very recently given total support to Leyton Orient’s new proposals and I am sure we are about to turn to Brentford’s new proposal when that comes in. He strongly supported keeping Wimbledon at Plough Lane, and I noticed when I drove past there at the weekend that there is still nothing built on it – so why not? He has also been involved in supporting and commenting on proposals for some of the smaller clubs, like Enfield, Barnet, Dulwich Hamlet, Wealdstone and AFC Wimbledon.

When he is looking at planning applications he has, however, got to look at them on their merits. He would like to take into account, though, proposals for the old site. If you are going to relocate, the Mayor wants to know what you are doing at the existing site as well, to look at it as a complete package. He does have to have regard to his other policies. In other words, he has a policy in line with the Government’s or, to a degree, borough policies, not to allow development on the green belt, so it makes it very difficult for him to say yes to a new football stadium on the green belt. However, as I said, we will take a very flexible attitude to this and, in the case of Barnet, he actually strongly recommended to Barnet Council that they allow a new stadium to be built on the green belt. He said that the old stadium, which was also on the green belt, should then be cleared and kept largely open.

I think this shows the kind of flexible approach that is needed. My own view is that you only get that kind of flexible approach if it is in the hands of the Mayor, otherwise local authorities have to take account of the comments of the local residents and if you are a local ward councillor you want to be re-elected. Of course you have got to take account of local concerns but the Mayor is in that very happy position of being able to look at London’s interests rather than Underhill’s interest or Plough Lane’s interest or whatever.

Culture, Sport and Tourism 11 23 September 2003 Meg Hillier (Chair): Thank you very much. Roger Hepher – and I am sure he knew before the Arsenal application – knows the ins and outs of how it worked at Arsenal. Can you just give a couple of minutes about your view of our report and approach to the issue of planning and what you think – and I know you gave evidence when we had a session on this - of the role of the GLA, the Mayor and the planning authority?

Roger Hepher, Planning Consultant: Starting with the role of the GLA, I think, in the case of the Arsenal scheme, it has been positive and helpful in two respects. One is in helping to maintain momentum and I am not being critical of Islington Council in this respect, they handled the planning application efficiently and effectively but nevertheless they found themselves receiving representations from a great many people and organisations. There is a great danger in that situation of the planning process grinding very slowly and I think Giles Dolphin and his colleagues did help to keep things moving.

I think also that the GLA is in a position to help to maintain a degree of balance. As has been touched on by some speakers already, a balance has to be struck with stadium development between the interests of the immediate community and the interests of the wider community. Sometimes local authorities and local politicians tend to find themselves particularly focussed on the concerns of local residents because those are the people who shout loudest at them. I think the GLA is in a position to stand back a little and help to rectify the balance.

Those are the positives. On the negative side, one consequence of the GLA being involved in the Arsenal process was that the total planning game bill was inflated because there were strategic objectives to be addressed as well as local objectives. That has been a big issue for the Arsenal scheme – making the whole very complex and expensive development stack up financially. I think the potential danger, that did not in fact manifest itself with the Arsenal project but I can see it potentially happening in other cases, is of a lack of clarity of the GLA’s role vis-à-vis the boroughs’ roles. That sort of lack of clarity can cause delay and confusion and be counterproductive.

That is on the GLA’s role. If I can just comment on recommendation four, I think first of all, the text of the London Plan, as reproduced here, is itself very positive. I think it is good to see the Mayor saying he will promote and develop London’s sporting facilities and encourage the boroughs to do the same. In the past the planning system has been very reactive; it has been the sports clubs themselves that have taken the initiative and the planning system has quite often struggled to keep pace. Now, football stadia and other sports stadia are very significant features of the urban environment; they take a lot of land, they have all sorts of impacts, they are important culturally, socially and in all sorts of other respects. Surely, if any type of development ought to be positively planned for, then sports stadia fall into that category.

On the proposal that the wording should be amended to talk about ‘preserving existing facilities’, I think, in principle, it is good to try and keep facilities of sports clubs where they have been historically for various cultural reasons, which are alluded to in the report. I have no problem at all with that. But I would just make a couple of comments. One is that there is a cost associated in many instances with staying in the locality and that is clearly illustrated by the Arsenal example. Redeveloping in such a densely developed part of London, where land values are expensive, has been particularly complex and expensive for the club. It would have been much more cost-effective to

Culture, Sport and Tourism 12 23 September 2003 have relocated to somewhere in the Thames Gateway, for instance. Thus, there is the cost.

The second point to make is that I think it is important that we recognise that the morphology of London as a city is constantly changing and the location of football clubs and other sports clubs is the result of historical factors. It may not be the ideal location in 10 or 20 years’ time and, in that regard, clearly major things are happening in the Thames Gateway. There are going to be big population changes in that area. Also, changes in the transportation network will affect how relatively convenient different locations are to people attending sports venues in the future. Therefore, I think it is important not to preserve the current pattern in aspic.

Meg Hillier (Chair): Thank you, that was very helpful. I am going to turn to Mike Kelly and Steve Dawson, a double act to explain what has happened at Leyton Orient and how you managed to pull that off and get such broad agreement for it. Then I am going to come to Eddie Rogers to give a similar outline for what is happening at Brentford. Can you be as brief as you can, because people clearly want to come in from the floor? Who is going to go first?

Steve Dawson, Chief Executive, Leyton Orient Football Club: I feel a bit like Ronnie Corbett amongst all these Ronnie Barkers here. We are a very small club, as everyone knows. We have a particular problem in our area in the fact that we are in a very deprived part of London with a very high ethnic minority. We have a very strong community focus generally. We had a specific problem. We needed to upgrade our stadium and we had no money. As far as planning issues were concerned, this was almost secondary. The first issue we had to resolve with the local authority was to get the local authority to buy into our scheme, which technically was the redevelopment of four corners of the ground as residential blocks. We had an agreement to invest all of those proceeds into the stadium structure, which was decaying and still is decaying at the moment.

As far as the planning process was concerned, it was like any other planning process; we had to go through exactly the same hoops as anyone who had put any application in. Obviously it was very frustrating on occasions. There were endless meetings and total conflict at times between the various different departments within the local authority, certainly with relation to the residential element and the social housing provision. To be fair, this is probably where the GLA did help us in their approach. They took a very open approach, as we did with them. Notwithstanding the fact that the London Plan states only 35% social housing, if we had done that our scheme would have been completely non-viable. There was therefore a lot of discussion about that and a lot of help in relation to that point.

We had a very strong local planning office, who were very focussed and there were times when everyone could see the general regenerative value of what we were doing in this relatively deprived area. I think, throughout the process, that was not lost and, from a planning point of view, that helped keep the initiative going. We had a particular problem in the sense that our costs would be moving away from us very quickly if we did not get a fairly quick resolution. Our planning application actually took 17 weeks from submission, which I think was really pretty amazing. I am sure he is going grey over there. It is really thanks to these guys; and the GLA played their role, although I think it was a more strategic role. They actually helped the local authority

Culture, Sport and Tourism 13 23 September 2003 push the scheme through and helped, certainly with the housing department’s demands. I think it played its role in this particular case.

Meg Hillier (Chair): Mike, do you have anything to add to that very briefly?

Mike Kelly, Head of Planning, Waltham Forest Borough Council: Yes, all planning decisions are a balance and, as Steve said, there were pressures for more affordable housing and there was obviously pressure from local residents. The redevelopment did produce quite a different [inaudible] of development and that would have an impact locally. Obviously there were demands from local residents, both in terms of the character of the new development but also the impact on individuals and all those elements had to be balanced. However, we took the view as a council, both as the landowner because the Council actually owns Leyton Orient’s ground, and as the local planning authority that keeping Leyton Orient at that site was important and we certainly gave that weight in the planning process for the reasons that have been suggested already - the importance of a club to an area - but also Leyton Orient were doing a lot locally and the redevelopment proposals gave them the opportunity to continue with that and to do more.

All those elements went together and we worked very hard. The application may have only taken 17 weeks but there was two years of negotiations before that to get all those problems right so that when the application hit the streets it was in a form that we could support and a lot of the silly little problems had been ironed out. Therefore, it is very important for clubs to talk to the planning system early and try and resolve those problems.

Meg Hillier (Chair): Certainly, from the evidence we heard and collected during our inquiry, that dialogue seems to be pretty key. I am sure you have got comments on that but perhaps we can hear about Brentford’s ongoing situation.

Eddie Rogers, Chairman, Brentford Football Club: Yes, indeed. This season is Brentford’s 100th season at Griffin Park. We actually started playing there in 1904, but for the last 25 years we have been looking to try and relocate because the ground is so closely hemmed in by housing that there is not an opportunity to develop the income that we should be able to develop from facilities that could generate income to the club, other than the normal gate receipts. We need this additional income if we are to remain competitive as a football league club.

In the past 25 years we have identified quite a number of sites. In fact, five years ago there was a joint initiative with Hounslow Council where we identified four potential sites and we had a joint study with them and one by one each one was squashed for one reason or another. We have more recently, in the last year, identified a site at Lionel Road, which is in Brentford and is ideally suited for a stadium, and the Council have been extremely supportive in our endeavours to secure this site. I can say that we have been finding it very difficult to treat with the owners of the site and the owners are the Strategic Rail Authority. They have agreed a deal over a year ago with a company that is proposing to put some sheds on this site, which is strategically a very important site. It is surrounded on three sides by railway. We are in partnership with a monorail company that is proposing to construct a monorail system which will ease the traffic along the A4 towards Heathrow and this would be privately funded. We have also discussed the facility for a bus terminal and it would also provide the focal point for a rail connection to parts of south London and connecting through to King’s Cross.

Culture, Sport and Tourism 14 23 September 2003

The stadium we are proposing would incorporate community facilities and there would be enabling development. However, although we have been hopeful of trying to conclude and agree a deal with the vendors, they seem reluctant to treat with us and are still in discussion with the people who have not yet put any plans forward after a year of consultation, but we are still very hopeful that we can get this scheme together because it does appear to be the only opportunity that Brentford have got of finding a suitable site to relocate to.

I would just like to add something else if I may. The Club is now being run by a board of directors that is made up of 50% from the supporters’ trust Bees United and their influence, with their communication with the local authority and the local residents and supporters has really been invaluable. I would say to any club looking to try and relocate or looking to try and carry out any form of development that it is very important that they do engage their supporters, their local residents and the local authority.

Meg Hillier (Chair): Thanks very much. I am looking at the time and we have about 15 minutes of debate on this particular topic. We will then touch on the issues of self- regulation, which are not entirely technical points but some important points about FA rules and so on, which I think Nic Coward and Chris Gamble will come in on because I think that is quite key. We will spend perhaps 15 minutes on that and then we will move on to getting supporters and residents involved, which will leave us 25 to 30 minutes for that. We can perhaps proceed on that basis. I see Paul Weston, from the Federation of Stadiums, with his hand up.

Paul Weston, Federation of Stadium Communities: Thank you. Paul Weston, from the Federation of Stadium Communities. As somebody who has witnessed a number of planning enquiries and planning battles in London, I feel very strongly that the decision-making on major stadiums should actually be taken away from the local authorities. I congratulate you as far as you have gone in indicating that we should take a more strategic approach and I would certainly advocate that that is done. We view stadiums in London very hierarchically. I do believe that the major stadiums – those that have a catchment well beyond what I would call local and those that impact beyond a single borough boundary, should actually have the decision taken by a strategic authority and not the local authority.

I say so because I have witnessed inordinate pressure being put on the decision-makers, the planners and the local politicians by different interest groups and, more often than not, when the process has finished, there is so much suspicion that things have not been done fairly, honestly and openly and, as much as the local authorities try, I think that suspicion often remains long with the residents and, in fact, some of the decisions have resulted in a breakdown in communication and relationship between the local community and the club that goes on for years afterwards and obviously spoils everything else that the club wants to do because immediately the action group reforms and takes it on. I would certainly encourage you to do that, look that way and consider a hierarchical pattern to stadiums in London.

Just one last thing before I finish, picking up on something Giles just said, I take his point about the Chinese recognising Arsenal’s and Spurs’s grounds but they would not know they are in Islington and they certainly would not know that Tottenham Hotspur play in Haringey. I come from Sheffield and I have no idea which boroughs they are –

Culture, Sport and Tourism 15 23 September 2003 not until tonight did I know Brentford was in Hounslow. I know it is in London; it can stay in London but the possessiveness that some of the boroughs have shown has actually held everything back as far as stadium development is concerned in London.

Meg Hillier (Chair): Okay, Tom Greatrex from Back to the Cottage.

Tom Greatrex, Back to the Cottage, Fulham: Hello, Tom Greatrex from the Fulham Supporters’ Trust, currently working under the campaign name of Back to the Cottage and hopefully very soon being able to change our name to something a bit more positive. I just wanted to make a couple of comments arising from the things that Giles Dolphin was saying. I am glad to hear the way that response read to me. When I got that summary it was as though the Mayor did not have any understanding of the issues and I am pleased to hear that that support in principle exists and I hope that that is borne out in some practical support as well. What I am talking about here is not particularly preservation but protection. I am talking about protection and, in terms of the recommendations to change the London Plan, because of the situation that Fulham have had, where for more than 25 years the site on which the football ground has existed is worth potentially more for another development.

It is not against relocation; if there was another site where you could build a football stadium in Fulham then there would be a completely different argument. But moving away and moving a club away from its historic community and its historic base for other gain is where I think there needs to be protection and the GLA is probably the most appropriate authority to provide that when we bear in mind the difficulties that local boroughs have. Nick Blackburn has already talked about the issues around the community with QPR, and I am sure that he and QPR would not want Fulham relocating permanently into their backyard or, if he would, I would be interested to hear why he thinks that would be a good thing to happen. Those sorts of protections that are mentioned in the proposed changes are worth looking at but I would warn against reliance on borough boundaries because the borough of Hammersmith and Fulham exists as an entity of the reorganisation of local government sometime in the 1970s. Fulham and the south of the borough and the north of the borough, where QPR play, are completely different areas. The traditional fan base of Fulham is built up around Fulham and the A3 corridor down to the south west. That is where they should be looking towards if there is ever any relocation rather than up to the north of the borough, saying that that somehow keeps a link with the traditional local area.

Secondly, on recommendation eight about moving out being allowed when planning permission is achieved. The situation that Fulham are in is that planning permission was achieved for a new stadium on the Craven Cottage site. Fulham moved out and it was only after that and after pressure and investigations that it became clear that the stadium for which planning permission was achieved was not going to be built and that is why we are currently in the position we are in. That is not a fair position for any club to be in and we hope that it would not happen to anyone else ever again.

Meg Hillier (Chair): Thank you Tom. We do have the Chairman of Enfield Town and there was some discussion about smaller clubs. Do you have any comments on that?

Paul Millington, Vice-Chairman, Enfield Town Football Club: Thanks very much. We have now managed to temporarily resolve our initial problems in that we went through a process with the local authority where they set up a task force to find a suitable home for Enfield Football Club, as it was then, in the borough of Enfield. That

Culture, Sport and Tourism 16 23 September 2003 never came to fruition, but in that process the supporters of Enfield Football Club managed to persuade the Council of the merits of a particular site. We now, in consultation with another club, have developed that site but we want to move on and have a home of our own in the borough in the not too distant future. We have already had some preliminary discussions with the local authority as to where that site may be.

Now, I was not quite clear about what point the London Assembly would take an interest. Obviously, this is a much smaller development and when we come to develop that new stadium we will be looking at a facility which is maybe Conference football standard or capable of being developed to Conference football standard. Would that be too small a project for the London Assembly to be involved in?

Meg Hillier (Chair): Giles, do you have a quick response to that point?

Giles Dolphin, Planning Decisions Manager, Mayor Planning: We do not know the details of the application and the site so I cannot give an answer. It may well be that it could be referable to the Mayor because the land is designated as green belt or metropolitan open land and in that case it would come under the Mayor and would be nothing to do with the size of the stadium.

Meg Hillier (Chair): We should be clear about terms; the Greater London Authority is made up of the Mayor, 25 Assembly Members and the officers who work here. The Mayor is the planning authority and the London Assembly are the gang who hold him to account and keep our beady eye on him, if you like. That is the distinction; we do not have any direct load because there is no planning committee here – it is solely the Mayor that makes decisions on planning. There we are, I have passed that buck. Are there any other points on planning?

Mark Ashfield, Chairman of the Football Supporters’ Federation, Southern Division: Mark Ashfield, I am here in two capacities: as Chairman of the Football Supporters’ Federation, Southern Division; and also representing Barnet FC supporters. Our problems at Barnet in particular I think illustrate several problems with the planning process. One is the nonsense of having an existing sports stadium with concrete terracing that then gets zoned as green belt when the green belt regulations come in. This seems to be a nonsense.

The second one is that we are in a stadium that has been there for 97 years and a lot of the objections which our local council took great note of came from people who had moved close to the stadium in the last five years or so, some of whom saw the chance of financial gain in their property values if they blocked the club from redeveloping and forced the club out of the borough. I appreciate that some local residents have genuine objections but I also think that there is a temptation, at least, to manipulate property values by being totally hostile and obstructing anything that a club of our size can do.

Also, we are in the situation where our stadium has, I would say, superb public transport links: a quarter of a mile from the tube station; three quarters of a mile from British Rail; and with 10 bus routes within a quarter of a mile of the ground. Whilst the Mayor took account of all these factors, the local council did not seem to at all in their obstruction of our plans to redevelop on the adjacent cricket club. I would contrast that ability to get to the ground by public transport, which for most London clubs is a very valuable asset. Those of us who travel to away games, if you go to a lot of the clubs who have relocated outside London – Wycombe Wanderers is one that comes to mind – you try

Culture, Sport and Tourism 17 23 September 2003 getting to their ground by public transport. It is three miles from the nearest station with no regular bus service. A lot of the relocated stadia are totally inaccessible by public transport.

Finally, the issue of whether or not you can in fact build a sports stadium on green belt. The area that we were trying to build on is known as metropolitan open land, and it is my understanding that land like that is available for sporting use and yet there seemed to be total hostility - from our local council, at least, but not from the Mayor – to our building a stadium on that.

Meg Hillier (Chair): Okay, thank you. Any other points? I think I might take an indicative vote on some of these issues in a moment. Any other key points on that? I think we have heard from most of the clubs represented here. Yes, John Williams at the back there.

John Williams, Football Research Centre: Mine is more of a brief question. Is there any regulatory function for the FA in any of these kinds of instances? Does the FA have a role to play and, if so, what is its role and what is the Independent Football Commission’s role in dealing with some of the sorts of problems we have been hearing about here, with people taking on football clubs? Have they had a right and proper test? Did we know what the motives were of the people who bought Wimbledon Football Club, for example, and what their aims were and what they would do if their immediate aims were not met, and so on and so forth? Where does the FA particularly fit in to the kind of regulatory scheme, as far as its member clubs are concerned in these sorts of problems?

Meg Hillier (Chair): That is a good point and if you are happy about it we will just move on to that once we have finished this section. While people think if they have any other questions they wanted to ask, we have heard different points of view about the planning system I thought it would be quite interesting to ask people if they feel satisfied with the current planning arrangements in this country. If you could indicate ‘yes’ by sticking your hand in the air.

[show of hands]

Right, what about ‘no’ then?

[show of hands]

Okay, we have also had two suggestions that have come out saying, on the one hand, as Steve Powell said, let us get rid of government involvement and leave it to the Mayor to decide. We also heard from Mr Weston about getting rid of local authority involvement. Those are the different ends of the scale so I am going to ask both those questions and again get a view. Do you think it would be sensible to take the Government out of the equation?

[show of hands]

Okay, a trickle of hands there. I hope somebody is noting these down. What about getting rid of local authority involvement in planning?

[show of hands]

Culture, Sport and Tourism 18 23 September 2003

About evens on the few who have strong views. Are there any key burning issues or questions you would like to raise on the planning front before we move on? We will make this the last point followed by any comeback from the panel.

Jonathon Kaye, Leyton Orient Fans Trust: Yes, Jonathon Kaye, Leyton Orient Fans Trust. I just wanted to say that it is delightful to hear about the seeming partnership between Leyton Orient and the London Borough of Waltham Forest with the club’s application for the redevelopment. It seems to me that the best way forward is to have a partnership rather than clubs, councils and authorities bashing heads against each other. It seems to me that the reason why our development is going forward is that there is this partnership that seems to be a model for the future. Meg Hillier (Chair): That is very much what we concluded in our report, as far as we went. Are there any quick points from anyone on the panel? Giles, I think a few things were directed at you there.

Giles Dolphin, Planning Decisions Manager, Mayor Planning: If I can come back on one point Roger made, suggesting, I think, that the GLA’s involvement or the Mayor’s involvement, may have made the Arsenal scheme more expensive because of planning gain. We actually proposed to Arsenal that they employ an independent financial consultant to evaluate the development value of the scheme. That was done and that person reported to the Mayor, not to Arsenal but Arsenal paid for it. The advice was that the overall package, which included a waste transfer station, 800 or so new homes and lots of other things apart from a stadium, was, on balance, viable. I think things have changed since, which have probably made it unviable. My answer is that, if they care to sell Thierry Henry, they could easily plug the gap, and being a Leeds United supporter, I am sure Peter Reid can offer them a couple of million.

In terms of the Brentford application or proposal to the Strategic Rail Authority, I am sure that my colleagues are already talking to Brentford and to Hounslow Council and will get the Mayor to use what offices he has to press the SRA to proceed. On the Barnet development, yes, metropolitan open land and green belt are both there for leisure and recreation but that does not include football stadiums. They are technically contrary to policy. I think I explained there are ways of dealing with this and the Mayor came forward with a proposal that would have, in a sense, swapped the land around so that the new stadium would have been built on a cricket field and the old stadium would have been returned to open space use.

Meg Hillier (Chair): I know that Alan Keen would like to come back on a couple of points.

Alan Keen MP, Chair, All Party Football Group: Yes, we disagree in some ways on planning regulation but it is not the planning regulation that is the problem. What has been lacking over the years is long-term planning, sensible planning and talking to each other. We did not have a GLA and now we have got one so that is a massive improvement; we at least have one elected body in London to look at the whole of London but, on a national basis, the sports bodies need to talk to government, local authorities and the sports clubs in order not to have the problems.

The problem at Brentford could have been solved and I am glad that my own MP and myself had something to do with improving the relationship between the local authority and Brentford Football Club. However, if a lot of talking had been done openly over a

Culture, Sport and Tourism 19 23 September 2003 period of five or ten years then Brentford would have been playing on that wonderful piece of land by [Two Bridge?]. It is worth saying to those who did not know where Brentford is, it is a long narrow borough and the proposed development is only a few hundred yards from the borough of Richmond and Twickenham and not more than half a mile from the borough of Ealing, so it does involve more boroughs and needs looking at on a wider basis. That ground could actually have been played on now and to give a larger example, although I do not want to get too far outside the field that we are talking about, I agree with Nic Coward that the new Wembley will be the best sports stadium in the world. I am a member of the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee and we have done five inquiries that have involved Wembley Stadium in that as well.

We have now got Wembley Stadium being built and it is going to be wonderful, with facilities to put an athletics track in there as well. We have got a Dome site, which I have to say would have been ideal – much better than the Wembley Stadium in the middle of a ramshackle factory area. Hopefully, that will be developed better in the future. If the new Wembley had been on the Dome site, it could have been the stadium for the athletics in the Olympics and the Olympic Village in east London would have been accessible from that. Instead of that we are going to have to build a new stadium in east London that is going to cost at least £350 million and then either give it away to a football club for nothing, because West Ham would like it but would not be able to pay the interest charge on it, let alone the capital cost of it, so we are going to have to give it away or knock it down.

With better long-term planning that situation would not have existed and it is all going to work out well in the end; we are going to get the Olympics, I am sure. I have been to Paris and the transport was bad and the Olympic Village was not satisfactory or that is what I was told. So, we get the Olympics and we get the best football stadium in the world but they could have been one and the same stadium if there had been some sort of long-term planning. It is not the planning regulation that is the problem, although it brings problems sometimes, but it is the overall ties[?], it needs government and the sporting bodies, football and the other sports to talk to each other all the time and to look years and years ahead and not looking in desperation when a club like Brentford needs the money to move as quickly as possible. That is what it really needs.

Meg Hillier (Chair): I think that is a point that is difficult to gainsay and it is a good point to finish this section on.

Steve Dawson, Chief Executive, Leyton Orient: Sorry, I was just going to say that you could give the Hackney stadium to Leyton Orient. It is just down the road.

Meg Hillier (Chair): Well, there is a bid. As they are both in my constituency, I will see what I can do. I want to now move on to self-regulation and I am going to bring in Chris Gamble to respond to Nic Coward because Chris has been sat patiently on the end, having travelled all the way from Middlesbrough. These are recommendations five and eight on your summary sheets there. These are where we highlight the Wimbledon FC/AFC Wimbledon issue and picked up on the issue of the name of a club and said that the FA should, we felt, apply its own rules. Obviously, there were complexities in that situation, which we really do not want to revisit here but if Nic could respond from the FA’s point of view and then if Chris can come in and explain her role and the role of the Independent Football Commission in the whole self-regulatory field.

Culture, Sport and Tourism 20 23 September 2003 Nic Coward, Director of Corporate and Legal Affairs, Football Association: This is obviously an important issue and it links very nicely into what we have just been talking about. I absolutely agree with Alan, and he knows this, that there has to be a strategic view for sport across all of government and, on Wembley, he knows our frustrations in dealing with whoever in relation to the creation of that strategic view. It includes issues such as planning because, at the heart of our submissions to this inquiry, is the fact that the inquiry recognises that clubs are different, yet when it comes to the big issues involving the London Assembly, the GLA and all the various responsible bodies in the London area, such as planning and rates – and we have already talked about Section 106 – these are very complex issues and sometimes it is not apparent to those on the receiving end, as has been very clearly shown here, that sports clubs at any level are actually being treated differently and that there is an recognition of those unique features that were outlined so eloquently by Barnet, Leyton and Fulham.

It disturbs me that, if we are trying to create a level playing field across clubs in a particular geographical area, our competition can somehow be distorted between clubs in the London area for what are extremely local reasons. I respect those reasons but, from my point of view, as the organiser of competitions, that is something that we have to have regard to. As the gentleman from Brentford was saying, there are very real issues with relation to their ability to compete because of – and I understand the reasons that are being made against them – reasons that are not the same as those that are being faced across the capital in Leyton where there has been an entirely different dynamic. Is that right? From my perspective, it cannot be.

To move into the issue which John Williams raised and which is something which we address in responses to the committee’s recommendations – recommendation five – I do not think there is anyone in football who would say no to this. If you ask anyone - and you have club chairmen here and people from all aspects of a club and interests of a club – no-one would say that they want a club to move. I think you could pretty much guarantee that, if you start a season saying ‘you want football to stay in this stadium and played at this club, do you not?’ I hope the answer to that is ‘yes’. I recognise of course, and this is at the heart of John’s question, that there are basically two occasions on which that gets challenged: there are what people might describe as ‘asset strippers’ and there what people might describe as either over-enthusiastic, over- optimistic or overstretched clubs, who because of their fans took that decision one too many, which they then cannot sustain. They saddle themselves with long-term debt and they sold their future, then something moves against them that they could not predict. Whether they should or not is up to them, but they did not predict it and running a football club, I do not have to tell the people here as they do it, there are things about which you have to make a lot of second guesses to work out everything that is going to happen in the market place. Over the last few years we have had quite a few, ranging from Bosman to ITV Digital and so on, that clubs have had to deal with.

You could say that through, as I say, understandable overstretching, they have suddenly mortgaged their long-term asset, the ground, the only thing they have of value. They have overstretched and suddenly they have not got the income stream and there is a bank who have got security over property. I will deal with both of those with one call, which is the call that we make in here, i.e. that these issues can largely be put down – you ask about football regulation, and we do have regulations about ground moves. In our submissions, sorry not in ours, in the Football League’s and the Premier League’s, at the level in the game which we think is the right level, there are those regulations. What we say is that it is often too late. The issue that has to be dealt with, we think at

Culture, Sport and Tourism 21 23 September 2003 a strategic level by government, in all its forms whether local authority or national authority, is, if they absolutely believe, as we do, that football clubs are different and are community assets, why oh why would alternative use be granted? I just do not understand, if that is absolute planning priority, and I think Roger Hepher made a point about a proactive approach, and if it is at the heart of the planning approach that the plans that are created in whatever the cycle is in whatever community, how can it be that alternative use is granted, which addresses in many respects the issue that John is raising, I think, primarily in relation to asset stripping.

The deal with London, who took the decision I do not know. Many years ago someone will have decide that with London’s theatres, about which Nick knows a considerable amount, a particular regime applies and I think they were treated differently and they cannot be anything other than London theatres. West End theatres will forever be the West End theatres – there cannot be an alternative use. I just ask myself the question again, and it is something we will be saying to Alan’s committee in the same way we have said to your committee, that we would ask government the same question. Why are you treating one cultural asset of this capital in one way but not others? There is also an issue with Sport England, which David and Supporters’ Direct’s Brian Lennox know a lot about. There is a veto in this country in the hands of Sport England, for instance for pitches – it is pitches and not the actual stadia but you are not going to go very far, well, you might be able to redevelop the stands but you will have to have a huge pitch in the middle of it, which Sport England have the right to raise a veto to or raise alarm bells to its development. We say in here that there are considerable numbers of ways in which we think the decisions can be made before it comes anywhere near football’s regulations, which are the real decisions that have to be made.

That is not ducking the issue because, to deal with it in two elements, we are seeking and I think clubs are now, for the first time in many years, recognising the fact that they do want to, at least on a message level, say to their many supporters and stakeholders, not least gatherings like this, that they do want to be able to say to their communities ‘we are here for the long-term good’ and that they are willing to submit themselves to some kind of process by which that can be, hopefully, proved or transmitted. Call it, if you like, a fit and proper person test. There is already one that exists for people in the game, I think we are talking about people when they come into the game as directors of a club, that they have to go through some kind of process. There are also many initiatives at Football League level in particular at the moment where Football League clubs are themselves saying ‘we have to change the way in which we conduct our business’. For instance, the Third Division saying they want to have an informal pegging for the amount of money they spend on players to protect their assets. They do not want to overstretch themselves and go to a bank and get in hock, meaning one day, if things go wrong, they are going to have to sell the ground. To deal with that, that is hopefully five and eight between them.

Meg Hillier (Chair): Okay, thank you Nic. Chris?

Chris Gamble, Independent Football Commission: Thank you. I should perhaps make clear at the beginning that the Independent Football Commission, the IFC, has no direct involvement in many of the issues you are discussing tonight: stadium development, planning commission, all that kind of thing. These are outside the remit of the IFC. Where the IFC does come into the picture is in the area of understanding the concerns that currently exist in football, and that is most definitely one of the jobs that it has been given to do. To give you very brief background, the Independent

Culture, Sport and Tourism 22 23 September 2003 Football Commission was established by football’s governing bodies, that is the FA, the FA Premier League and the Football League, with the agreement of government, to examine the performance of the governing bodies across a range of issues, including financial regulation and, very emphatically, customer-facing issues in football, but also to assess the appropriateness of existing rules and regulations, and ultimately to assess whether football’s existing self-regulatory system is working effectively.

The Commission is now about 18 months’ old and it has had a very busy first 18 months and is halfway through, therefore, the term that was set for it by the governing bodies. Where it has become involved in some of the issues that are being discussed tonight, and which were mentioned to me about 30 seconds before I sat down here, is that the issue of Wimbledon’s relocation was brought to the attention of the IFC in its capacity as the final point of appeal in football’s complaints hierarchy. The IFC’s role, in that context, is important and valuable. I think in the context of Wimbledon, it became and perhaps still is, a little confused, in the sense that the Wimbledon Independent Supporters’ Association brought to the IFC’s attention a complaint that they wished to make about the decision that the club could move to Milton Keynes. The Commission saw this as a relevant issue for it to look at and it was very frank in the position it could hold in this context, and it is the one I outlined at the beginning – the IFC has no remit in this area nor is it empowered to do things like overturning decisions that have been made either by FA commissions of inquiry in this case or certainly by planning authorities or anybody else.

However, the Commission examined this issue and discussed it with the governing bodies, and it did so in the context of the supporters being concerned about the process by which the decision was made that Wimbledon could relocate. The Commission felt it was valid for it to examine the papers and the opinions that were brought to its attention, because part of its role is to look at the rules and regulations of the football authorities.

What it concluded on Wimbledon was that it could do nothing any more than the FA or the Football League could do to overturn the decision of the independent panel of inquiry that said that Wimbledon could relocate. What the Commission did feel, however, was that there was a case for examining the regulations that had applied to that decision, not least because the decision appeared to be one that neither the FA nor the Football League wanted; the outcome was unexpected, in other words. There was therefore definitely a case, the Commission felt, for expecting the Football League in particular to look at rule changes. Indeed, the Chairman of the Commission is still in correspondence with the Football League about rule changes that may or may not be appropriate.

The role of the Commission therefore in this context is perhaps most valuable in acting as a sounding board or conduit for stakeholders generally, not just supporters, to raise issues of concern in football. Indeed, the reason I came here tonight on behalf of the Commission was, I hope, to sit there with you and listen to the concerns that are being raised and to understand what the issues are. One thing that comes through this report very strongly, and is another area where the Commission has been involved, is concern about the impact on neighbourhoods of football clubs generally, whether it is in the context of developing stadia or simply in the context of the regular disruption to their local lives because there are football matches on their doorsteps at regular intervals. In this we talked to the Federation of Stadium Communities, for example, and again we are there to listen and understand what the concerns are.

Culture, Sport and Tourism 23 23 September 2003

To answer John Williams’s question about what the Independent Football Commission does, it produces an annual report – it has issued one so far – which makes recommendations which it puts to the three governing bodies and which it hopes the governing bodies will implement and it hopes it has influence with the governing bodies and will encourage them to make some changes that the IFC believes are appropriate. In this respect, the IFC being halfway through its term is very important. We have talked about the Wimbledon case and we have talked about neighbourhood issues.

We hear a lot from people who contact the IFC about their concerns to do with stadia in one way or another. This again is the IFC acting as a sounding board and its importance is that, ultimately, at the end of its three-year term – and it is not ready to do this yet - it is asked to offer an assessment of how the self-regulatory framework works. It can only do that by listening and gathering in as much evidence as it possibly can. It is very important that issues like Wimbledon and some of those that have been raised tonight are at least passed by the IFC so it can understand them and put them towards the rest of its evidence gathering and so that, at the end of its three-year term, it is in a position to draw on evidence, sound facts and the opinions of supporters and other stakeholders widely across the game to say whether self-regulation is working and to review the rules and regulations changes and assessments that it has made over its three-year term. That is where the IFC stands.

Meg Hillier (Chair): Thank you very much for that comprehensive overview of your work, Chris. We have got about five minutes, which is very tight, and we can perhaps pick up on some of those issues in the final session if they are relevant. John Williams and I do not know if Christine Oughton or any of her colleagues want to come in.

John Williams, Football Research Centre: It is just a very short question to Chris Gamble because I though she said Wimbledon fans made a complaint about the process. I understand you cannot do anything about what has happened in terms of the decision that Wimbledon have made to move to Milton Keynes but my understanding was that they complained about the process that the FA undertook to make that decision. Did the IFC come to any position on that and did they make public their position on how the decision and process was actually arrived at?

Chris Gamble, Independent Football Commission: It did make public its position. It conclusions were put on the IFC website so they are publicly available. Its conclusions on the process were that, under the existing system and rules and regulations that apply, the football authorities followed their procedures correctly. It did not mean though that those rules and regulations were necessarily appropriate in the longer term. The rules and regulations as they stood were properly observed and it was a system that was correctly followed by the football authorities. The question was, as I said, the outcome was not one that was desired by any of the parties involved so it was therefore reasonable to question whether those rules and regulations were appropriate.

Meg Hillier (Chair): Okay, thank you. I do not know if you wanted to come in Christine. Dr Christine Oughton is the Director of the Football Governance Research Centre at Birkbeck College.

Christine Oughton, Director, Football Governance Research Centre, Birkbeck College, University of London: It struck me, as the discussion has gone on tonight, how many of the issues surrounding some of these recommendations are linked. In

Culture, Sport and Tourism 24 23 September 2003 particular I see quite a strong link around the issue of transport and regeneration and the role of supporters in football clubs. For example, if the transport were to be improved around Tottenham football ground, that would help not just the football club expand its ground and its facilities and improve its well-being, it would actually help the local residents as well so there are many situations where there are win-win possibilities that can be pursued and I think some of the comments made by Eddie Rogers about how supporters’ organisations can help and assist in finding win-win solutions are extremely important.

Some of the work that we have been doing at Birkbeck with clubs in the West Midlands area has brought some of these points home to us. For example, in the West Midlands region – we are moving outside of London – we are looking at how a club working with its local community and not-for-profit organisations can actually help bring money into the game and regenerate stadia and help deliver social policy objectives that are part of local government. For example, there is something called the Buildings Renewal Programme in the West Midlands that offers hundreds of thousands of pounds for building renewal for projects that deliver social policy objectives like increasing social inclusion, tackling racism and helping problems with truancy, which many football clubs have done with education programmes to help children with long-term truancy problems. That fund is only available to a not for profit organisation – it is not available to the football clubs in the West Midlands but if they work with the supporters’ trusts, which are not for profit organisations they have access to that fund. Again, it is an example of a win-win situation.

Meg Hillier (Chair): Final point in this section and then we are going to move swiftly on.

Dave Boyle, Supporters Direct: Dave Boyle from Supporters’ Direct. To touch on one of the things that Nic Coward said about Sport England, I think he highlights one of the problems that football has and how it could actually help government help itself in this respect. For example, I was speaking to a planner who is a Sunderland fan who works in the roads department of Durham Council. If he wants to actually just encroach by about two feet onto a school playing field a process immediately triggers in which means it is an extremely tortuous process, but one wonders how, for example, a football ground could be turned into houses despite objections from supporters.

Sport England actually did object in the case of York City and have objected to the development of York City there. One of the problems that we have found with Sport England in the past is that there has been an element of a Janus-faced attitude by football clubs, which say they are community assets but retain their private profit- making, which is obviously one of the biggest jokes in history that football clubs are profit-making. However, nominally speaking they are still profit-making entities.

In actually helping to demonstrate the benefits to the community which football seeks to bring, just as a small example, if you look at the mission statement of the Football League, it states its major business and its role in life is to maximise the revenue available to its member clubs, which sounds like a trade association trying to increase their revenue. Now, I know it is more complicated than that but something like a nod and a wink to the community asset status of a football club in such documents would actually be saying ‘we are not just saying it, we are putting it into the important documents which govern our game’. Furthermore, things like allowing football clubs to not just work with not for profit organisations but to become not for profit

Culture, Sport and Tourism 25 23 September 2003 organisations and actually make a virtue out the situation they have been in for most of their 120 years in that sense. Meg Hillier (Chair): We are really only touching a subject which we could debate in its entirety for some time. Are there any very quick comebacks? We really need to move on to the final session. Nick Blackburn, Chairman, Queens Park Rangers: When you put in there and emphasise the importance of retaining links with the historic area, I would just like to repeat something that John Williams said. In London there is a moving population and if you look at QPR’s supporter base, a lot of it is out on the M40/M4 corridor and we as a club cannot stay where we are in the long-term. We can at the moment in the division we are in but if we want to be successful and we want to get back anywhere near the Premier League, we are going to have to move, and we are going to have to move where we have room to develop and the supporter base will be there. We moved from Queens Park, we were originally in the borough of Harlesden, if there was such a thing in the 19th century but we could easily move to Hillingdon or Hounslow or somewhere out in that area and our fans I think would come with us. The majority of them would come with us.

Meg Hillier (Chair): Okay, fair point. One of the summaries I was going to make at the end was that borough boundaries are clearly rather arbitrary, which I hope was reflected in our report. Giles, do you want to come back on those planning issues and I would ask Dave Boyle, Paul Weston and John McGlashan to be ready to swap with members of the panel.

Giles Dolphin, Planning Decisions Manager, Mayor Planning: I have been staring at recommendation eight, thinking what is wrong with it? Then I realised that Fulham, of course, had planning permission to redevelop their stadium, for all the good it is doing it. I wondered if clubs or chairmen of clubs could be required to pay a returnable bond to the FA or something like that?

Meg Hillier (Chair): There is an interesting idea. Nic, do you want to take that away to think about perhaps?

Nic Coward, Director of Corporate and Legal Affairs, Football Association: Thank you very much.

Meg Hillier (Chair): That is a plan for getting their own back, I think. Could we have a quick swap over so we can get into our final session about getting supporters and residents involved. Thank you very much to the panel. We have Dave Boyle from Supporters Direct, John McGlashan from Brentford and Paul Weston from the Federation of Stadium Communities. We have actually heard from all three of you so if I could ask you to be fairly brief. I am going to turn to Dave first to talk about Supporters Direct and the work you are doing there and how it is rolling out, with a particular focus on the London issue. I am then going to turn to John to give a case study of what is happening at Brentford, again briefly, and I think a number of people here will know it anyway, we have highlighted it in our report. Then from Paul, I am very keen to hear some of the views of residents and what you are doing at the Federation of Stadium Communities. Then we are going to open it up to the floor for as long as we have got left. Dave Boyle, Supporters Direct: To be very brief, I do not know how many of you know about Supporters Direct but we were formed three years ago as a recommendation of the Football Task Force, which looked at the example of various

Culture, Sport and Tourism 26 23 September 2003 clubs around the country which seemed to have better relationships between their fans, their clubs and their communities, and identified that a supporters’ trust might possibly be a good way of bringing the key stakeholders involved in a football club together. Supporters Direct was set up to try and bring about more of these supporters’ trusts and nobody really knew what would happen and three years’ later we had 100 of them with two more in formation and Sunderland fans have realised that life is not quite as rosy as it once was and they are getting on board now.

We have also got fans now at 45 clubs who are actually owning parts of their football club and transferring their moral ownership, which they felt very deeply, into a legal ownership. We have got 32 supporters who are now actually in the boardrooms of football clubs up and down the country. We have extended our work to Scotland and there is a great deal of support for the initiative there as well because, in some respects, the problems which the English game is facing, Scotland has been living with for some time. You look at the issues of competitiveness and domination by the bigger clubs for example. It is something which has been seen to have a lot of benefit in that country.

With regard to the report and where the trusts which we have worked with impact upon it, first of all I would like to say that we welcome the actual report as we did the inquiry itself and, as our response showed, we were very supportive of all but the recommendations regarding police charging, which we have already touched on so I will not touch on that.

I thought it was extremely good to see the numbers of supporters’ groups who actually submitted evidence to the inquiry. I think that is a real sea change that you would not have seen five or 10 years’ ago. Seeing the calibre of the evidence being provided bears out something that we have said in Supporters Direct for some time: that the talent available among the supporter base of any football club is absolutely superb and is a superb resource which any football club would be stupid to ignore. What we stressed is that the supporters’ trusts must be operated as professional organisations, which show that they understand the seriousness of the issues they are dealing with. I would like to think that the evidence they submitted was testimony to that. We are very supportive of the recommendation regarding the supporter’s trust model as something that would be of benefit to football clubs.

It seems pretty self-explanatory that, if you have an issue where the community and the football club have not been as meshed together as they should be that the residents, many of whom are supporters, if you can bring those parties together through the bridge of a supporters’ trust, many of whom are supporters and residents or, furthermore, they are not residents at the moment but they used to be or their families used to be. To touch on something that I said about the importance of place in football, just like Fulham, AFC Wimbledon, of whom I am a supporter, also have the A3 corridor as our home, so they are ours Tom. Historically, Wimbledon has not had many fans in Merton – not as few as Mr Koppel would argue – but one of the things that is very important to those fans is that they do feel an affinity to the area of Wimbledon, not so much the borough of Merton but the area of Wimbledon, even though many of them, I think it is 85% of our fan base have never even lived in the borough of Merton but it has become a mythic and a mystical place that we are tied to umbilically in that respect. You can ignore that at your peril. Just because we have a long journey, for some of us it is like a journey to paradise. Furthermore, it is just to say we support supporters’ trusts being involved in football clubs. We do say in our evidence that we would be against setting an arbitrary figure of, say, 5-10% of the fan base but what we

Culture, Sport and Tourism 27 23 September 2003 would say is that we have seen the benefits, both in London and around the country of what a supporters’ trust brings to a club and we would support any club in London who wanted to get further involved in that to contact us and their supporters’ trust.

Meg Hillier (Chair): Thanks. Over to you John for a brief précis of what is happening at Brentford.

John McGlashan, Director (Trust), Brentford Football Club: It is difficult to know where to start really. Five years ago we felt that our club was going to find itself in financial difficulties some time in the future. Today is the future but what has happened in the intervening period is that we looked at starting a supporters’ cooperative effectively, and this was before the days of supporters’ trusts. Supporters Direct came along and we worked with them to create a trust at Brentford. The supporters approached the club and said that we wanted to work more closely with them than had been the case in the past. The club, and I confess we were surprised, welcomed us. What the situation was at that time was that the club found itself heavily in debt and we are talking two and a half years ago now. It was essential that we moved from our stadium for the reasons that Eddie was talking about earlier but the club had not identified a new site.

What has happened in the last two and a half years is that the majority shareholder has offered the club to the supporters’ trust. The supporters themselves have identified this new site in Lionel Road. We have improved our relationships as a club and as supporters with the local authority and one of the ways we did that was by taking the lead from Charlton a few years’ ago when they actually put supporters up in the local elections. We did it but, unlike Charlton, we actually got one of our supporters elected to the local authority. It changed things overnight for us and I have to say that the efforts of the local authority and our local MP since then have been absolutely fantastic and we now see a way forward for Brentford Football Club.

Meg Hillier (Chair): Thank you. A very neat summary of a very complex situation. Paul?

Paul Weston, Federation of Stadium Communities: Thank you Chair, good evening everybody. My name is Paul Weston, I am a resident of Hillsborough in Sheffield and I do thank you for inviting me down here tonight. Unfortunately there are not many other residents in the audience so I am going to have to do the task on their behalf. My organisation represents residents who live in close proximity to major sports stadiums, although more often we see our role as supporting the residents. It is their views that are important, not my own personal views of their situation. We do our best to ensure that, at the right time and the right occasions, their voice is heard and I would please implore the Chair and the GLA to make sure that residents who live round stadiums are involved in all future debates on the stadium situation in London. They are out there and they do have strong views, as some of you will already know.

That neighbourhood or constituency of local residents that I am talking about is massively diverse as well, so I apologise to them for trying to generalise the situation that is happening in umpteen localities around the country, and certainly a lot in London as well. I would start with a general statement and say most of us who live in the vicinity of a major sports stadium are actually quite happy to share a stadium with the sports club that operates there but I do emphasise the word ‘share’ and it is about sharing. Sadly, too often, the sharing does not seem particularly balanced to us and I

Culture, Sport and Tourism 28 23 September 2003 will say straight away, from what I have heard tonight, that all this sentiment about historical locations and this pandering to the long-established habits that football supporters have is not enough to justify things remaining as they are and to justify the club demanding to stay where it is and do whatever it wants, whenever it wants. That is no justification at all.

To be honest, from the perspective of many local residents of late through the 1990s in the London area and elsewhere, it is getting less fun and much more of a hassle. I have got an hour’s lecture about the issues and the problems of living next to a major sports stadium. Please invite me along, you can have the whole lot and you can hear all about the bugbears and the nuisances that we have to put up with. We are prepared and amazingly tolerant as a group of residents, really. We do accept a lot. We accept that normal life, for instance, is suspended for 25 days a year. I just wish someone would keep those days predictable and not change them at the last minute, when it is suddenly a Monday or a Tuesday and God forbid my football club gets into Europe and we play Thursdays or Fridays as well. Not much chance with Sheffield Wednesday.

The other very frustrating thing of late of course is the cost and the popularity of the professional game is such that the vast majority of local residents are now being priced out of the picture. They cannot afford to go regularly and the season ticket arrangements that prevail at places like Newcastle means that we have not got a hope in hell of getting to see a match but we see what goes on before and we see what goes on afterwards and we sit in our room and say, ‘what was that cheer about, do you think it was a penalty or a goal?’ We trade our views over the back garden wall.

I have read the report and I have to say, from my perspective and I think from people I have discussed the report with, there are a few myths that seem to be surfacing in this report that I want to try to attempt to dispel, if I may Chair, in the next couple of minutes. I would say that, from our local perspective, and I am emphasising local here, that most of the large football clubs do have a negative effect of our neighbourhood. I accept that a few commercial operators will benefit but please do not try and keep convincing us that programme selling and stewarding are respectable permanent jobs. They are not; it is a short-term temporary arrangement, it might look good on figures but it is no substitute for real work, which is what too many of the residents in the stadiums are looking for, and work with opportunities as well.

I also noticed in the report that the Mayor claims that the clubs bring the following benefits. It said in the report that the presence was quite positive on day-to-day trading in the area. Well, I have to say again that that is only for the few and if we are take a healthy living agenda on this I do not think supporting and promoting the continuance of fag shops and junk food shops is actually having a particularly positive impact on commercial operations within the area. The effect of the games themselves, alright it might be great to dance around the street in bits of Islington on occasions but if you are living somewhere near White Hart Lane or Sheffield Wednesday, to be frank the way the teams are performing over the last few years brings nothing but misery so do not tell us that it is great fun and we can all enjoy those kind of celebrations.

Finally, this whole business about stadium development being a catalyst for regeneration - that is only true if the thing is done properly and that the whole planning of the regeneration is shared between community, club, spectators and the local authority and that there is an agreed plan and an agreed programme as well. Too often, I am afraid, redevelopment is being imposed upon us. Taylor, bless him, did a very good

Culture, Sport and Tourism 29 23 September 2003 job but the result of that report was that we have had redevelopment proposals after redevelopment proposals forced upon us; we have seen stadium capacity being increased and shoehorned into a very dense residential area and, on top of that, you have still got megalomaniac developers trying to bulldoze their way through the planning system, and you have heard me talk about that just now.

Two other myths, I am afraid I have to address, in the whole business of community work that the clubs are doing. Are they not marvellous with all this football in the community? We do not all want to play football, guys. There are other things we would like to do and we have got some really good ideas of how we could use the stadium. We would love to see a player occasionally but now you cannot get a player out – the agent asks for too much or he is just a complete barrier to that. Unfortunately as well, and it is particularly so in London, some of the clubs are actually charging for the privilege of kids participating in summer football schemes and football in the community.

The other one I keep getting told about and we have again tonight is education schemes – ‘we will take the kids in, the disaffected youth, we will teach them IT and we will give them an alternative to school’. That is the disaffected youngster, we have got other kids who are bright and ambitious and they are being excluded from this process. I was horrified in a meeting in Southampton recently when all this was pointed out to a Sikh community, who are fiercely proud of the achievements of their children, only to be told they will have access to these remedial classes in the football stadium. It was a real insult to them and, sadly, the only ones who are getting into the stadium to use it are those who are benefiting from government investment and schemes. The clubs should be looking wider than that and supporting and being part of the community and broadening out access and opportunity within the stadium.

Also, talking about those schemes, it does raise one thing with me, which is this definition of community and I think too often the clubs and the local authorities are not talking about the residents immediately next to the stadium but are talking about a much wider community. It is either the whole borough or it is the spectator base catchment that they are talking about. There is another community and it is the one immediately next to the stadium.

I just want to say one more thing while I have got the opportunity. I do welcome the report and, despite the moans - and I will continue moaning, I promise that – I do think it makes a very positive contribution and so does this debate here tonight. However, the debate has to continue, the dialogue must be established between club and community and involve spectators and local communities. That will only succeed if it is recognised that the local residents have the right to be consulted and to be heard. Local residents know their area better than others and have a good understanding of what will actually work and what will not. Local residents also know the capacity of the area. A lot of the issues you have had in London are about increased capacity at the stadium. Residents know the limits. The residents at Fulham and Arsenal were very definite that there was so far you could go but no further in their neighbourhood. Local residents also know for themselves the kinds of benefits that the club can bring, and local residents, believe it or not, actually want to co-exist in harmony with the clubs. We will do that and, by the way, on occasions local residents can pick a much better team than a chairman or manager. Can I thank you for inviting me and thank you for giving us a voice.

Culture, Sport and Tourism 30 23 September 2003 Meg Hillier (Chair): Thank you and just to pick up the point about residents, any group that submitted evidence was invited. We actively sought representations from residents;’ groups and there a few here tonight but perhaps not as many as there are other interest groups. We are very tight on time and I am going to suggest we stretch it to five past nine. That does not give us very long for comments but if there are any comments from the floor could they please be brief? We can continue the debate informally afterwards but we do need to finish formal proceedings for procedural reasons.

Dan Johnson, FA Premier League: Dan Johnson, from the FA Premier League. I would just like to pick up on some of the points made by Paul, with regard to clubs’ community involvement and clubs’ educational involvement. It is something that we take tremendously seriously and is something that is actually part of our rulebook. We do produce an annual document called the Club Customer Charters, which address all the things that Paul and others have raised this evening. We have study support centres. We have a variety of educational, social inclusion and community initiatives and anybody who is interested in that can get in touch with us either directly or look on the Premier League website premierleague.com. We do do a lot and we do take it very seriously but we do also appreciate that it is a road to travel and we do always welcome comments and input.

Meg Hillier (Chair): Gentleman right at the back there.

Sean Hamil, Football Governance Research Centre, Birkbeck College, University of London: Sean Hamil, speaking in a personal capacity. Obviously, football clubs have to be good neighbours but am I the only person who wonders – did people not see that ground when they moved in? I live near Highbury and it is really not that bad, and in fact since Islington Council started tightening up the parking on the day of games, they have sorted out the parking situation. Also, in the 1960s there were crowds of 75,000 going to Highbury – how did they ever manage? I think it has to be a two-way street here. I know of one or two decent people who were involved in a campaign against the Arsenal stadium. Fundamentally, I have an anxiety about this. I think a lot of it is, they would rather be living somewhere else but unfortunately they happen to be living in a built-up inner city area. If you live in a built-up inner city area there are a lot of nuisances, an awful lot of nuisances, of which a football club is only one. I hear what you are saying and obviously the fundamental problem here is that football clubs have been very poor neighbours.

I was listening to Mr Blackburn from QPR saying let us move out, we are going to be able to break even if we move out to Hillingdon. Well, maybe if he had not spent all that money on all those players about three or four years ago then maybe you would not be in the situation you are in now. I just think we need to step back here and look at the neighbour business as a two-way street. Meg Hillier (Chair): Two other people have indicated who have both spoken before, is there anyone else?

Michael Hanley, Keep Barnet Alive: Michael Hanley, from Keep Barnet Alive. You were talking about football stadiums wanting to shoehorn capacity in. In the case of Barnet, prior to the Taylor Report we had a capacity of 11,000. We are looking to build a new stadium of 9,200 capacity, that is all, next to where the current ground is. We have local residents saying ‘no, this is an absolute disgrace, how dare they want to build a stadium so big in such an area’. The club was getting sell-outs, maybe a long time

Culture, Sport and Tourism 31 23 September 2003 ago, but then it came to the game where we got relegated out of the league there was a 5,500 sell-out and there a couple of thousand people locked out of the ground, so that is one of the things, we were able to get big capacities in the past yet we are not being allowed to now by residents.

Meg Hillier (Chair): Thank you very much. Final comment from this lady over here.

Maria Caig, Leyton Orient Fans’ Club: Maria Caig, representing Leyton Orient Fans’ Club. I would like to make two points addressed to different speakers. I echo what Dave Boyle says about emotional links to particular areas. I support Leyton Orient and I happen to have no personal link with east London whatsoever. Frankly, it would be more convenient for me if it relocated to Essex. I would oppose that; it is not Essex Football Club. That is all I would like to say about that.

With regard to the community of football, the fans’ trust sees the community of Leyton Orient being very much included in the supporters, but very much including the local residents as well. They do live next to the club and they do have a say in the club, but we have a club where it ranges between 6-9% of the supporters live in the borough of Waltham Forest. We would like to change that. We think the people who live near football grounds probably have an interest in how the team goes. We are quite keen – and it is part of our charter, we are set up in model rules as an industrial and providence society to work with local communities to benefit local communities and we are more than happy if supporters, many of whom live outside the area, work with local communities and try and improve things for them as well.

Meg Hillier (Chair): Thank you. Rather than taking comments back formally from the panel, and I think we can perhaps continue this debate, but we have heard in evidence and I would suggest, if you are interested, you go through some of the written evidence we heard of a model example at Brentford, which is where our best practice recommendation came from. I just wanted to summarise as we wind up. We have heard some really interesting points that I will take back to the committee and to other bodies as appropriate and Alan Keen has heard some things and he may just want to make a final comment, but it is right that we should also be looking at non-league clubs, we take that point back. I am not sure how we will do that. The Wembley transport issue has been raised and that is something I will take back to other Assembly Members and we will discuss how that is best addressed.

The race and social exclusion issue which was raised early on I think is absolutely key and you are right that it was not really the focus of this report. However, I know from one of my own clubs, Leyton Orient, that there is real issue about the profile of the supporter base and that it does not reflect the local community so I think there are issues. The policing issue I think we have already highlighted that we are going to be discussing with others how that is best approached and I think we have heard very clearly that there are many issues around planning and borough boundaries that we need to keep discussing. I think I mentioned the residents’ issue.

Just a reminder that the evidence we have heard so far, including tonight’s transcript, are all available. The evidence we have heard already is on the website and the written evidence will be produced in a document with tonight’s transcript, which should be available within the next month. Everything we had bar one was in the public domain, so everything we have seen you can see too. Alan’s committee is doing some very interesting work now on various issues but he is also going to be looking at some

Culture, Sport and Tourism 32 23 September 2003 further issues in the future and the Assembly will no doubt look at this again. We thought we might have got somewhere – we did not think we had all the answers – and there are many more questions that have been raised tonight that we need to look at.

Alan, do you want to say a word about what you are doing next, because you have got a hearing in September, have you not?

Alan Keen MP, Chair, All Party Football Group: Our inquiry has been going on for about two months and we have had three hearings so far and there are another three or four to go - it will finish before Christmas - on aspects of the inequalities in football and the finances. Then we may go on to other issues after that. I think tonight has been great and I think the GLA need complimenting on getting people talking to each other and getting the issues in front of government, the sporting bodies and everybody else.

If I can just finish on one thing. I was born in London but I was brought up in Middlesbrough, and I have lived in London for 40-odd years now. I recall going to Ayresome Park, Middlesbrough’s old ground, for tickets for a game when I was hardly into my teens. I went home to my mother and said ‘what on earth does this mean? On the ground outside it says ‘Middlesbrough Football and Athletic Company Ltd’.’ I could not understand, and my mother explained that I did not actually own part of the club. I thought I did because I went there and cheered with everybody else. I do not mean there is no part for the private sector in football, as there is in every other aspect of life, and I worked in the private sector all my life until I was elected to Parliament. However, I was offended as a very young person that I did not own part of the football club. I knew I did not own the whole thing but I did want to be part of it and I think what Dave Boyle and people around the country are doing is really making sure that football does belong to the people. It is so important that people understand and feel that their football club that they have supported all their life they feel it is theirs. I was actually born in Lewisham and if I had not had to flee back to the north east I probably would have supported Millwall or Charlton and would have been no better off than supporting Middlesbrough.

This inquiry has really been worth holding. It makes people listen to each other and that is what has been lacking over probably the 125 years that football has existed.

Meg Hillier (Chair): Thank you very much for that vote of confidence and we look forward to following your inquiry and I think a lot of these issues are national issues that are going to be outside the remit of the London Assembly and London government, but I hope we have contributed to it. Thank you all for coming.

[Ends]

Culture, Sport and Tourism 33 23 September 2003