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Closing date 8 January 2023.įuture of women’s football – SGSA submission Guide to Safety at Sports Grounds ‘Green Guide’Īll-Seater Enforcement Approach 2023/24 Consultationīook your tickets for this year’s conference Spectator injuries at sports grounds dataĪCT (Action Counter Terrorism) Awareness eLearning
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Matches between league and non-league oppositionĭynamic Performance and Testing of GrandstandsĬounter terrorism advice for sports groundsĪcademic Forum minutes – 5 September 2019 When should the first annual inspection and structural appraisal be undertaken at a new, or recently completed, stadium?
#Bradford city stadium fire man manual
Is an Operations Manual held by a public body covered by the Freedom of Information Act? I’m a new Safety Officer, what do I need to know? Planning for moving people in an emergency terrorist threat situation
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Safety certification for National League clubs Safety Advisory Group – Terms of Reference Checklist Local Authority Safety Certification Training All because he went back to the one thing he knew best that would get him out of trouble.SIA Sports Ground Exemption – Policy GuidanceĪnnual inspection v structural appraisal – what is the difference? “I don’t think Stafford intended for people to die. “I never believed it was an accident and I never will,” she told him. His family expected a fuller investigation to follow and he says his determination to find out “the truth” stems initially from a conversation with his mother, Susan, when he was 21. Once dubbed “the bravest boy in Britain”, Fletcher is the only survivor to publicly challenge the official inquiry, describing it as wholly inadequate and saying it took place far too close to the event. If we start having multiple coincidences then it's not a coincidence.' It is clear to me that at Bradford, with Stafford Heginbotham in charge, there was a mountain of coincidence." Of Heginbotham's history with fires, Fletcher writes: "To quote a Los Angeles Police Department fire investigator in Blaze, the Forensics of Fire by Nicholas Faith: 'It's rare to have a coincidence. The author has told the Guardian it was a "litany of lies". Fletcher's book reveals how Heginbotham initially denied seeing the council's letter before repeatedly changing his story when it became clear this was not true. Bradford City had received three separate warnings about the potential fire risk, two from the Health and Safety Executive and another from the council, but did nothing. Heginbotham died in 1995, aged 61, and was never prosecuted for the Valley Parade fire, despite the coroner later saying he had given serious consideration to bringing a charge of manslaughter. A further fire at the Douglas Mills building occurred in June 1981. In December that year there was a fire at the premises of Coronet Marketing, a subsidiary of Heginbotham’s Tebro Toys. Further blazes followed at the Douglas Mills building, also owned by Heginbotham, in August and November 1977. A firm Heginbotham had founded suffered a serious fire in 1970 before the Castle Mills building, owned by Heginbotham, had a fire in 1971. The pattern began with a fire at a three-storey Bradford factory in May 1967 and continued on Good Friday 1968 with another fire at the premises of Genefoam, of which Heginbotham was the managing director. Fletcher does not accept that version and quotes a report by the Fire Research Station, a government-funded body, that “features of the Bradford fire required a detail of understanding greater than that presented to the formal inquiry”.įletcher’s evidence was collected through months of painstaking research into Heginbotham’s business history and by trawling 20 years of local newspaper reports into fires in the Bradford area. The inquiry heard only five days of testimony and concluded the fire was probably started by a match, a cigarette or pipe tobacco slipping through gaps in the floorboards on to litter that had built up over the previous 20 years. Yet this has never been reported and did not feature in the Popplewell Inquiry, chaired by the then high court judge Oliver Popplewell, which held its investigation only three weeks after the fire. Heginbotham had learned two days before the fire it would cost £2m to bring the ground up to safety standards required by Bradford's promotion from the old Third Division that season. The disaster at Valley Parade came at a time, according to Fletcher's evidence, when the businessman was in desperate financial trouble, unable to pay his workforce beyond that month.
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