National football policing lead welcomes Commissioner’s call for clubs to pay towards £70m bill
Chief Constable Mark Roberts, the National Police Chiefs’ Council lead for football policing, has welcomed support from the Metropolitan Police Service Commissioner calling for football clubs to contribute more to the “extortionate” cost of policing football.
Sir Mark Rowley told the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg programme that football clubs should pay towards the £70 million cost of policing their matches in the UK.
He asked why organisers of events that require policing to support their security do not pay for it.
Mr Roberts said: “The cost to the public purse for policing football matches is extortionate. Taxpayers are footing the bill to the tune of £70 million each season and we need new legislation urgently putting in place to change this.
“Men’s football overwhelmingly creates the most public order deployments nationally, remaining the single most high-risk sporting events that we have to police. Which given the frequency of the games in the UK, is a huge drain on our resources and means that we are essentially losing around 800 officers a year to policing football.
“As things stand, football clubs are only required to cover the costs incurred inside their ground or on their property – they do not have to pay a penny towards the policing of surrounding streets, city centres or towards the increasing marches to stadiums by fans.
“On top of this, 48 per cent of games across all leagues incur no charges for policing, with 95 per cent of the National League being police-free.
“In a nutshell, this means that we as the police are subsidising clubs that quite happily spend close to £400 million in a single transfer window.
“I am pleased that Met Commissioner, Mark Rowley, has again highlighted this issue and it is now being discussed in a wider forum. Hopefully, the renewed focus will help to speed up the ongoing government consultation process into the current legislation.”
Writing in The Sunday Times, Sir Mark also said a “once in a generation of policing was long overdue”, with the 43-force model designed in the 1960s not being “fit for purpose for at least two decades”.
He said there was a need to “reduce the number of forces by two-thirds”, with new “bigger and fully capable regional forces supported by the best of modern technology”.
This would make better use of “the limited funding available”, Sir Mark wrote.