London clubs pay very little to the Metropolitan Police for policing with their stadia and police need to be invited in before they will attend any football match.
Under a freedom of information request for last season the Met revealed Chelsea paid the most of the London clubs at £94,388, Spurs paid £38,568, Arsenal paid £32,536 while West Ham paid just £12,555 and Crystal Palace paid nothing having no police presence in their stadium.
In comparsion, the Met charged the same clubs a combined £3m in the 2011/2012 season not long after Gold & Sullivan took over the club. In that year Arsenal paid £943,136, West Ham paid £537,934, Spurs paid £537,934, Chelsea paid £328,897, Palace paid £219,204 while no relegated Fulham and QPR paid £190,771 and £138,674 respectively.
A legal ruling in 2008 said the clubs could only be held liable for costs incurred for policing in their ‘footprint’, meaning inside a stadium or in private land immediately surrounding it. That means a substantial shortfall for the police for the cost of officers on the routes to and from the grounds.
Met Police estimates it costs them an additional £4m in unrecovered costs to police London football matches outside their stadia with West Ham accounting for around 10% of that.
In West Ham’s concessionaire agreement with the stadium Owners E20 Stadium LLP the contract says:
The Stadium owners shall be responsible for procuring and paying for the cost of all police services to be provided on an match days within the Stadium Island. However, it does go to say that in the event that the applicable Laws or ACPO Guidance for Football Deployment and Costs Recovery are amended then West Ham would have to pick up 50% of any additional charges.
Thanks Sean, I have always thought that with the FA and clubs awash with cash that paying for a Police presence should manadatory for all clubs, there are a significant number of clubs with numerous players on their books that earn more in a week than the weekly cost for all the police at all the stadiums. It is not right that the tax payer should foot the bill for footballs problems is it ? When a new football deal is negotiated the FAPL could take the cost straight out of the money and then pay the clubs the remainder, simple right ?