That’s the SCL, apparently! I attended what’s called a Table Top exercise on 9th November, as STAR’s representative.
It is run regularly with all the parties involved in ensuring safety at the stadium (stewards, police, ambulance, fire brigade, traffic management, Reading Borough Council). The main part of the evening consisted of working through a range of scenarios relating to emergency situations at the ground and all parties working through how they would handle them.
I was able to contribute to several by raising questions and suggestions from the perspective of a fan. It was enlightening to see the depth in which safety is considered. The stadium operations manual is a huge document with every section written by experts in particular fields and covers everything from terrorist attacks to medical emergencies and system failures (but not defending at corners unfortunately).
A couple of interesting stats came up:
– The SCL Is the safest ground in the. Championship and the 5th safest across all the leagues, based on reported incidents per spectator. Over the last 12 months we’ve had 0.1 incidents per 100 spectators.
– We have the second lowest number of banning orders over the last 8 seasons (68 in total)
– We have one of the lowest number of arrests at the stadium. However, arrests have increased post COVID. We are no exception to this national trend, although our numbers remain low.
From Martin