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Notts County praised for work on ‘safe standing’ area at Meadow Lane

By Joe Locker, Local Democracy Reporter

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Notts County has been congratulated for its work to create a new safe standing area at Meadow Lane.

The Magpies are introducing a raft of new safety measures this summer, including the safe standing zone, new handrails and other structural improvements to the ground itself.

Cllr Carole McCulloch (Lab) praised the new safety measures at a Nottingham City Council meeting on Wednesday (July 9), during which the authority supported the plans and renewed a key safety certificate.

Cllr McCulloch, the Regulatory and Appeals Committee meeting’s chair, said: “What I would like to say is I was really, really impressed.

“Looking forward to possibly moving up the leagues, you are already putting things in to place what you would have to adhere to anyway.

“I would like to congratulate [the club], and officers as well.”

Standing areas at football matches were banned after 1989, following the Hillsborough disaster, which claimed the lives of 97 Liverpool fans.

The rule did not apply to lower league clubs.

However the Government later decided that from the season beginning 2022, Premier League and Championship clubs would be able to introduce licensed safe standing areas.

Nottingham Forest introduced safe standing areas across parts of the City Ground ahead of the 2024/25 season.

Notts County is now looking to introduce an area in The Kop in the summer this year, and its plans have been signed off by the council.

It will run the full width of the stand to ensure sight lines are not compromised, with the number of rows – starting at the back –  subject to demand.

Matthew Davis, principle environmental health officer for Nottingham City Council, said: “The club are making some structural changes to the ground, they are introducing safe standing, we are comfortable in the fact safe standing are to prevent people from toppling over.

“As part of that process the club has provided technical drawings and detailed measurements, and we have verified them and we are confident based on what has been provided they are compliant.”

The club also arranged for the installation of handrails in some of the radial gangways in the Derek Pavis stand in the previous season, to facilitate “safe and effective ingress and egress of spectators from the stand”.

Additional handrails to the remaining radial gangways in the Derek Pavis stand are proposed over the summer.

During the meeting Mr Davis noted the Jimmy Sirell stand, built in the 1990s and which has capacity for 5775 people, has an “ongoing risk of that area being overcrowded”.

The new safety measures will ensure that, where the stand is expected to exceed 4400 spectators, the club must produce an event-specific risk assessment and a management plan that details the measures to be implemented to address overcrowding risks.

Plans would then be discussed at an extraordinary Safety Advisory Group meeting.

The meeting further heard the club will be removing 45 seats to install a permanent TV gantry in the upper tier of The Kop, and is taking “proactive action” in relation to the physical condition of the ground.

Safe standing areas feature seats with integrated barriers or independent barriers or rails, in front of each seat, providing support and preventing forward crowd movement.