The Anonymous Widower

When Was It Known Hillsborough Had No Safety Certificate?

It has been said many times in the last day or so, that Hillsborough had no safety certificate, at the time of the disaster on April 15th, 1989.

Perhaps, my memory has gone, but although I can remember the disaster, I can’t associate it with what I was doing at the time. I wouldn’t have been at football at Ipswich, as at that time I didn’t go. I can remember where I was when I heard about Lockerbie a few months earlier.

So for how long has it been known that Hillsborough did not have a valid safety certificate at the time of the disaster?

Surely to knowingly book the stadium without a valid safety certificate, is akin to flying a Boeing 747, without a valid certificate of airworthiness.

Or was that something that always happened in those days?

In trying to get more answers to my question, I came across this page on the web site of the Football Industry Group at Liverpool University. It is something everybody should read. This is one of the page’s conclusions.

The disaster was basically caused by the failure of South Yorkshire Police to control a large 
crowd of Liverpool fans outside the Leppings Lane End, and the poor state of the ground, 
but it was also clear that football’s total failure to learn from the numerous disasters that had 
afflicted it during the twentieth century, and a police force conditioned to view supporters as 
potential hooligans and so always expecting violence, contributed significantly to the 96 deaths 
and many hundreds of injuries.

I agree very much about learning from the past.  In the 1960s, I was in a few crushes at White Hart Lane and Highbury, and how they avoided a Hillsborough-type disaster in some matches, was more down to luck than any planning.

The page also says this about the safety certificate and emergency plans.

Sheffield Wednesday had redeveloped parts of the ground without obtaining 
a new safety certificate, or telling the emergency services: the result was that the safety certificate was 
outdated and useless, and that plans Sheffield Wednesday had developed with the local emergency 
services could not be put into practice, as the layout of the ground had changed.

That to me is inadequate, to say the very least. An emergency plan like that, only works without an emergency.

September 13, 2012 - Posted by AnonW | Sport | Football, Liverpool, Liverpool University, Safety