Policing Football Matches (281A/22)
Request
I am looking for some information in regards to the policing of Birmingham City games.
The information I would like to receive is as follows:
Having attended the Stoke City vs Birmingham City game today I was informed that over 400 personal were on duty including police officers from Staffordshire, West Midlands, West Mercia police and more. All officers were informed that cancelled leave was suspended for this match.
Therefore, I was informed that at least four police forces including West Mercia Police, had officers on duty including West Mercia Police with 21 officers. Due to the vast array of police from other forces I would not be able to ask each and every force specific numbers.
Thereby, under the freedom of information act 2000, you are required by public authorities to give me public access to information held by public authorities.
I have several requests for this information. These include;
1) Number of police on duty in total including all 4+ police forces during Stoke City vs Birmingham City home game against United on February 20, 2022.
2) Cost of policing for all home games of Birmingham City Football Club during 2021 / 2022 (this season).
3) Number of police on duty for Birmingham City vs Aston Villa, March 10th 2019.
4) Average number of policing for all games at Birmingham City Football Club during 2021 / 2022 season.
5) Cost of policing for all games at Birmingham City Football Club during 2021 / 2022 season.
Clarification received 23/02/2022:
I will be contacting Staffordshire police regarding this. Yes I would like to proceed with the following questions.
Additionally, I would also like complete information regarding police numbers for all Birmingham City home fixtures for the season 19/20 I.e the last season pre covid.
Clarification received 28/02/2022:
In response to the two billet points. Regarding question 5 I meant police numbers for each game for the 2021/22 football season up to and including the Saturday 26 February fixture at home against Huddersfield Town.
In regards to the second bullet point, by complete information I was just generalising that I want full information in case this was misinterpreted for whatever reason.
To conclude, please answer the following questions and ignore my previous emails;
1) Cost of policing for all Birmingham City home games including cup competitions during 2021 / 2022 (this season).
2) Number of police per game at each Birmingham City home game including cup competitions during 2021 / 2022 (this season).
3) Cost of policing for all Birmingham City home games including cup competitions during 2019 / 2020 season.
4) Number of police per game at each Birmingham City home game including cup competitions during 2019 / 2020 season.
5) Cost of policing for Birmingham City vs Aston Villa, March 10th 2019.
6) Number of police on duty for Birmingham City vs Aston Villa, March 10th 2019.
Response
Please find attached our response and be advised that in relation to questions 1, 3 & 5, the information we hold for the cost of policing will only be the overtime charged to the football code. This does not include any duty time worked on a football game because this is not (in the main) separately collated and therefore not separately identifiable. Additionally, football clubs are currently only legally obliged to pay for the policing on their “footprint”, usually inside the stadium and surrounding car parks. The provision of “consequential policing” outside a football match (for example at a railway station or in the city centre), is currently the responsibility of the police.
Every effort is made to ensure that the figures presented are accurate and complete. However, it is important to note that these data have been extracted from a number of data sources used by forces for police purposes. The detail collected to respond specifically to your request is subject to the inaccuracies inherent in any large scale recording system. As a consequence, care should be taken to ensure data collection processes and their inevitable limitations are taken into account when interpreting those data.
The figures provided therefore are our best interpretation of relevance of data to your request, but you should be aware that the collation of figures for ad hoc requests may have limitations and this should be taken into account when those data are used.
If you decide to write an article / use the enclosed data we would ask you to take into consideration the factors highlighted in this document so as to not mislead members of the public or official bodies, or misrepresent the relevance of the whole or any part of this disclosed material.