Published: 4 July, 2013
by DAN CARRIER

THE Spurs Supporters Trust are calling on the club to offer to trial new “safe standing” areas for the Premier League as they rebuild their home ground.

Tottenham are laying plans to move their White Hart Lane stadium to a site next door to their current home.

The new ground, which will hold 56,000, will also boast homes, shops, a public square and a hotel.

As part of the stadium design the trust, who represents fans’ views to the Spurs board, want Tottenham to join Aston Villa and Manchester City in offering to run a pilot scheme to reintroduce standing areas. Trust co-chairman Darren Alexander said: “More and more people want to stand at football matches and this is a growing movement that we support.”

He said with the new stadium being designed, the club could offer standing areas. “If we are designing a new ground you could put in new access points and trial the same designs used in places like Germany,” he said.

With spiralling prices, young people are being priced out of football matches and standing areas could help solve this.

“The average season ticket holder’s age at Spurs is 42, and at Arsenal it is 48. We need to look at making football affordable again and offering standing areas would help,” he said. “If we could have the bottom tier of the large top stand that is being planned as a standing section, the atmosphere it could create would be unbelievable.” 

Stadiums became all seater in the light of Lord Justice Taylor’s report into the Hillsborough disaster. But new evidence says having fans standing had little to do with the tragedy. New designs, in place in German grounds that comfortably hold 80,000 fans, include tiered safety barriers to stop crowds surging forward.

A Spurs spokesman said: “We are keeping a watching brief on any developments around the issue of ‘safe standing’ and will keep an open mind going forward.”