Rail seats

Standing proud

The Football Supporters Federation’s national Safe Standing Campaign aims “to persuade the Government, football authorities and football clubs to accept the case for introducing, on a trial basis, limited sections of standing areas at selected grounds“.

Supporters Club & Trust board member, Jon Darch, has been at the forefront of this national campaign.

Bristol City became the first club to install the proposed ‘rail seats’ at Ashton Gate in February 2014, when a small demonstration block of 33 seats was created in block A of the Atyeo Stand.

See the rail seat block being created in double-quick time in this time-lapse video:

Although that demonstration block of rail seats has since made way for the new Lansdown Stand, Bristol Sport tell us that they remain committed to introducing safe standing at Ashton Gate as soon as regulations permit.

As legislation currently requires that ‘only seated accommodation’ is provided for football games at Ashton Gate, a waiver of this requirement or agreement from the relevant authorities that rail seats do indeed constitute ‘seated accommodation’ is needed prior to this coming about and Jon continues to campaign nationally to this end (e.g. being closely involved from 2011 to 2016 in helping Celtic to get the go-ahead under the different legislation that prevails in Scotland).

More details of the first ever installation of rail seats in a UK stadium can be found here.

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