Aston Villa today became the first Premier League club to offer to trial standing areas for fans.
Grounds in the top flight and Championship were forced by law to become all‑seater following the Hillsborough disaster but the Football Supporters’ Federation and Birmingham MP Roger Godsiff are campaigning for terraces to be tested.
Godsiff has submitted an early day motion to Parliament which “urges the Government to accept the case for introducing, on a trial basis, limited standing areas”.
Villa have given their support to those calls and want to host a trial. Their chief executive, Paul Faulkner, said: “We’ve had a number of good discussions with the FSF over the past 12 months and fully support their campaign to allow small-scale trials of safe standing areas at grounds.
“Whenever we have discussed the topic with our fans we’ve found almost unanimous support for such a trial, and the concept of giving fans the choice to decide to either sit or stand at a game.
“We believe Villa Park could be a potential venue for such a trial, and would like the opportunity to progress the plans further with the wider support of the football community in this country.”
Peterborough also want to host a trial although they already have some terracing, due to a ruling which gives clubs promoted to the Championship three seasons to become all-seater. They are in the final year of that dispensation.
The trial would need a change in the Football Spectators Act 1989, brought in after the death of 96 Liverpool fans at Hillsborough.
Peter Daykin, safe standing co-ordinator at the FSF, said: “Since the Taylor Report, the overwhelming majority of football supporters have favoured a choice of standing and sitting at football.
“Standing was outlawed on grounds of safety, and yet successive governments have agreed that standing is safe — it’s hard not to when it is done perfectly safely every week at rugby grounds, lower league football grounds and in top football leagues all around the world.”
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Last year, the Hillsborough Family Support Group opposed a return to standing areas.HFSG spokesman Margaret Aspinall said then: “We are totally against any form of standing whatsoever and always will be. Our football clubs should remain all‑seater stadiums.
“People always say they have standing areas in Germany but we don’t play any part over what happens in that country — we just believe there’s no such thing as safe standing in this country. We will not be encouraging the Government to change
the law.”
The Premier League and successive governments have until now also opposed any change.
