Agenda item

To provide the Community and Wellbeing Scrutiny Committee with an update on the Council’s emergency planning, licensing enforcement and multi-agency coordination in relation to major events at Wembley, and progress in implementing the Casey Review recommendations from the UEFA Euro 2020 Final.

Councillor Muhammed Butt (Leader of the Council) introduced the report, thanking all partners involved for being part of this process. He felt that the progress made since 2020 and the work done to improve emergency planning and protect residents and businesses through collaboration and partnership demonstrated the commitment to ensuring a situation such as the disorder of the Euro 2020 final never happened again. He added that this work would always be a work in progress as there was always new improvements that could be made, but felt that the tangible improvements being seen were a testament to the commitment all partners had made to ensuring Brent remained a safe borough for everyone, including visitors.

Jehan Weerasinghe (Corporate Director Neighbourhoods and Regeneration, Brent Council) added that the report addressed key questions in terms of what the findings of the review were and how they had been implemented on the ground. He highlighted the statutory responsibility the Council and partners had in ensuring safety to, from and during events and the commitment to ensuring Wembley Stadium was the most welcoming venue for people who came from across the world. He felt that all actions that the team had put into place in effective partnership with the Metropolitan Police, British Transport Police, FA and other partners showed the solid, singular dedication to the safety of citizens to ensure they left the world-class venue having had a great experience and left safe.

Chris Whyte (Director of Public Realm, Brent Council) introduced other colleagues present to respond to questions and asked Tom Legg (Director of External Operations, Wembley Stadium – FA) to present the improvements that had been made at the Stadium over the last 5 years.

Tom Legg then made a presentation, highlighting the following key points:

• In response to the Casey Review, Wembley National Stadium Limited (WNSL), Brent Council, Wembley Park Ltd, and the Metropolitan Police had worked collaboratively to meet the recommendations to improve the local and spectator experience within Wembley on event days, including;
  • Improved accessible pass gates on Level 1 of the stadium concourse, securely reinforced to prevent unauthorised entry and complying with Disability Discrimination Act guidance.
  • Physical external security perimeters to minimise impact on crowd flows, compliant with Hostile Vehicle Mitigation (HVM) measures.
  • Advanced oversight of safety and security plans and identified risks, relayed to the Health and Safety FA Board representatives for discussion and approval.
  • Peer reviews by leading crowd safety experts to undertake a ‘health check’ of event day processes, with the Stadium scoring 94.3% on average, and two further independent reviews of CCTV coverage across partners and neighbouring deployments to reinforce event day measures and ensure all aspects of event day security, safety and counter terrorism were thoroughly reviewed.
  • Continued staff feedback from stewarding agencies following each event, and a permanently employed second Deputy Safety Officer for Stadium Event Days. Since 2022, the Stadium has also deployed a higher volume of security stewards compared to previous years.
• Additional measures following the implementation of the Casey Review recommendations have also been implemented, including:
  • Implementation of an outer Door Security Perimeter for the UEFA Champions League Final 2024, an Event of National Significance, which was subject to detailed crowd flow analysis, fencing prototype testing and stakeholder engagement between Zone Ex and Safety Advisory Group (SAG) stakeholders following a successful trial at five events prior to the Final. The perimeter provided a precedent for the deployment of an Outer Security Perimeter at future Events of National Significance.
  • Continued enhancements to secure the stadium perimeter, including installation of new security gates and rolling shutters at access points.
  • Continued CCTV deployment improvements, additional 10X CCTV screens in Zone Ex to increase monitoring, and CCTV maintenance and system upgrades.
• Through the establishment of Zone Ex and the Best in Class approach now being taken, the following improvements had been made:
  • Development of an in-house Zone Ex Coordination Centre providing a control room base for WNSL, Brent Council, Wembley Park Ltd, TfL, Transport Operating Companies, National Highways, and traffic and external operations contractors, uniting all Zone Ex stakeholders in one place to manage activity on the external footprint.
  • A communications strategy across partners now ensured the message of zero tolerance for ASB was extended across Wembley, with the Stadium, Council and Wembley Park ltd also providing additional infrastructure measures to emphasise the PSPO messaging on event days and digital wayfinding signage.
  • Enforcement of the PSPO, including the prohibition of ASB, sale/resale of tickets, consumption of alcohol in open spaces and licenced areas, public urination, flying of drones, access of unauthorized vehicles, and sale of merchandise.
  • Prohibition of the sale of alcohol in the local area on event days and designated fan zones acted as key drivers to improve fan behaviours in Zone Ex.
  • ‘Alpha Zulu’ stewards reinforce to visitors the prohibition of alcohol on arrival at Wembley Park, with up to 100 stewards deployed on the footprint depending on the Met Police event risk rating.
  • Temporary toilet facilities have been implemented across Wembley Park to reduce public urination on event days, with improved, high-capacity modular toilet units that were easy to install, energy efficient and independent of a mains power / water supply.
  • Zone Ex areas are now suitably protected with fencing resources where gaps were identified in a Crowd Egress Management Plan in 2022, with protected Resident Quiet Zones.
  • WNSL secured a 365-day/year premises licence for the ‘East Village’ to act as fan zones, providing capacity for up to 4,000 spectators with designated drinking areas.
  • Zone Ex action days took place on an annual basis bringing together Zone Ex stakeholders to ensure responsibilities and procedures are readily known for stakeholders to respond to a range of different event intel or incidents.
• New initiatives in progress for 2026 and beyond include:
  • Event enforcement recategorization, amending the risk ratings of events to correspond to the enforcement priority of the event.
  • Continuing to look for a permanent secondary fan zone site that can match the capacity of the East Village.
  • S106 commitments following the approval of Brent Planning Committee to allow for 54 major stadium events per year to provide £150k for TfL towards CCTV and signage upgrades around Wembley Park Station, £100k towards a transport study and £200k towards any recommended improvements arising from that, monetary contributions towards Brent Council’s operational costs for all events with an expected attendance greater than 51,000 and additional £15k for each major event after event 46, and up to £200k towards CCTV maintenance and system upgrades around the Stadium.

Peter Dearden (Chief Inspector – MO6 Public Order Command, Metropolitan Police) addressed the pillars of work the Metropolitan Police were focused on during event days, including; precision targeting of drug taking; seizure of alcohol, with 16,000 alcohol seizures in 2025 alone; and football banning order rates, which he highlighted were increasing and targeting the right people committing the most serious offences and keeping them away from all football across the country. He agreed that the relationships were very mature across the various partners, and in particular commended the Council’s PSPO Enforcement and deployment of officers to address violence against women and girls.

The Chair thanked colleagues for their introduction and invited comments and questions from those present, with the following points raised:

The Committee was pleased to hear that partners recognised their statutory duties to keep all visitors and local residents safe and the efforts to work collaboratively across partners to implement improvements. They asked whether partners were reassured that all of the recommendations from the Baroness Casey Review had now been implemented and were confident that all partners were totally equipped to take the right actions in an emergency. In terms of responding to the recommendations of the Casey Review, Chris Whyte advised that he was very satisfied that partners had complied with those fully, particularly in relation to Anti-Social Behaviour (ASB) and implementation of regulatory controls around the sale of alcohol to football fans, which had been a contributing factor to the disorder at the Euros final. Local business had been very willing to comply with the ban on sales of alcohol, and a PSPO had been introduced to prohibit the drinking of alcohol in public areas. He felt these controls had served to help reach a situation where the levels of ASB and disorder had fallen away since that event. Baroness Casey had subsequently revisited her recommendations and been satisfied that partners had complied with them. In relation to security threats, particularly in response to references to vehicles mounting pavements, he pointed out that the Wembley Zone Ex footprint was encircled by Hostile Vehicle Mitigation Measures which were an integral part of the infrastructure. Tom Legg agreed that partners were ready to take the correct actions in the event of an emergency, highlighting collaboration and the right resourcing plans providing the ability to cope with most scenarios. Mark Lynch (Stadium Director – FA) added that the Wembley Assurance Group had been formed, with Baroness Casey chairing that group, which was made up of representation from Brent Council, FA, Wembley Stadium, Metropolitan Police, Home Office, DCMS, Government Stakeholders and TfL, convening on an annual basis to review the previous years’ events and understand challenges, key learning and take a forward look towards Euros 2028.  In terms of what had been discussed at the most recent meeting, Mark Lynch advised that members had reviewed transport challenges from the previous years’ events, looked at changes in football behaviour, particularly fan marches and how they were dealt with at the stadium and across London, and planning into 2028, particularly looking at fan zones and screenings across London. Tom Legg added that the FA was proud of the achievements made but recognised that there was a continuous improvement commitment and partners would keep refining plans to ensure that what was deployed to every event was fit for purpose to appropriately suit the nature of the risk presented.

Peter Dearden added that the tailgating legislation currently going through parliament would assist in target hardening the infrastructure to deal with some of the problems Baroness Casey had identified. He recognised that resourcing levels was a specific issue raised by the review, and the Police now ensured they attended very early on event days and stayed as long as necessary, acknowledging that there was crime in the wider area that may need to be addressed and allowing that longer window of deployment. By way of example, he advised that 5,500 officers had been deployed to summer concerts alone, which he felt showed the Met Police commitment to making the environment safe and secure. In terms of ensuring all partners were ready should an emergency occur, he advised that the testing exercises provided comfort that processes were in place to respond to incidents, and added that all police commanders working at Wembley Stadium events were CBRN and NTA trained, meaning the officers posted to event days were fully equipped to deal with those types of emergencies should there be a need.

Noting recent events in Birmingham where fans had been denied entry to watch their team play, the Committee asked whether that was at the discretion of the police command and what level of resourcing police deployed to events. Peter Dearden advised that he was unable to comment on the West Midlands police case. He confirmed there were low, medium and high risk ratings, as well as elevated risk at an event of national significance, which was unique to the national stadium, and the police understood that this was the highest profile stadium hosting the highest profile events, and there was a need to resource to that level of risk. A specific algorithm was used to understand what resourcing levels were needed, recognising that this needed to take into account the time someone left their home, travelled to the stadium and returned home. As well as resource numbers, there were tactical options available to bring risk down that could be deployed, and he was confident that, with the combined experience and expertise of all partners involved, the risks could be met and mitigated.

In recognising the work of partners to implement the recommendations from the Casey review and drive improvements, the Committee asked how partners understood whether the measures being taken were successful. Tom Legg advised that a considerable amount of time was spent ensuring that the Stadium was collecting the right data after each event. This included tracking the number of enforcement actions taken against the audience on event days, which should illustrate that the amount of enforcement activity was reducing and therefore that resources and measures put in place were working. There was a commitment to continue to collect and track that data on enforcement impact. In terms of the boundary of that data, Tom Legg confirmed that this was primarily collected across Zone Ex, but the Stadium also collected data from other delivery agencies including British Transport Police, TfL, train companies, and quarterly meetings with resident groups to collect information and feedback. For 2026, the FA was also looking to introduce the ability for resident groups to be able to upload specific issues happening in their wards in real time so that they could be responded to in a specific way.

The Committee highlighted that, whilst the outcomes from the implementation of the Casey review recommendations had been alluded to, there had been no data included in the report to support that. They added it was difficult to judge the effectiveness of the improvements without the impact included in the report. Tom Legg acknowledged the challenge and advised that he was keen to discuss the data collected and show the positive trajectory from improvements, but would need to check with partner organisations sourcing the data whether it was open data that could be shared. In recognising that, the Committee advised that the data provided could be in a more over-arching, digestible format and not granular, providing Key Performance Indicators and measuring the progress of those. Tom Legg agreed to take an action considering how best to represent impact data and come back to the Committee for a future review. The Committee asked that this also included sentiment analysis and feedback from residents as well as the enforcement actions undertaken around ASB and alcohol seizures.

The Committee noted that the last multi-agency exercise was in January 2024, and felt that 2 years was a long time between exercises, suggesting that there was a need for the multi-agency to meet more often given the number of events the Stadium would now be holding annually. Chris Whyte confirmed that tabletop exercises were carried out frequently both internally within the Council’s own operations and jointly across the partners involved in event days, highlighting that the Stadium professionally hosted these exercises which included scenario planning.

The Committee noted the substantial investment towards TfL CCTV installation around Wembley Park Station, but raised concerns that issues did not always take place within the boundary of the event zone but on tube links and local areas. They asked whether there were enough resources in place to recognise and deal with issues outside of the event zone. Tom Legg highlighted that one of the investments made through the delivery of the Zone Ex Co-ordination Centre was posting TfL officers within the control room to act as the liaison between the Stadium Control Room and TfL’s main operating centre, meaning that there was visibility of what was happening on the entire TfL network. Other transport providers were also co-located so that, in the event of an issue in the wider transport network, the control room was immediately aware and could put appropriate plans in place to mitigate any risks.

The Chair invited Councillor Rita Conneely, who had attended the meeting in her capacity as Chair of the Resources and Public Realm Scrutiny Committee, to contribute to the discussion. She asked what work was being done to fit in to larger strategies around ASB and crime prevention as a whole. Chris Whyte responded that the main tool to address that on event days was the PSPO that fit within the wider suite of enforcement controls available across the whole of the borough, which was seen as best in class for large stadium events. He added that other large stadiums across the country were looking to this approach to adopt something similar. CCTV was also deployed on event days which was felt to be a crucial element, in collaboration with the police to get that right. Simon Finney (Head of Neighbourhood Management, Brent Council) added that there had been investment into the CCTV around the Wembley Park estate with cameras that could track and focus on incidents, alert operators when there were issues with cameras, and use multi-sensor technology. Outside of event days enforcement teams regularly dealt with ASB matters as part of their day-to-day operations.

Brent Youth Parliament Representatives were also welcomed to the meeting and invited to contribute. Representatives highlighted that there was a high concentration of young people moving in and out of the Wembley Park area during event days in order to attend schools or the civic centre, and as such they felt there was a large risk to young people. One representative provided an example of having been walking home from school during the peak of the Euro 2020 events and having a beer bottle thrown at them. In outlining these issues, the representatives raised concerns that the advisory groups detailed within the report were not consulting young people in conducting their reviews and improvement programmes, and requested that Zone Ex consulted schools and young people in the area, who they felt shouldered the burden of the increased activity and ASB in the area. They also highlighted the need for better provision of transport links with TfL to prevent increased risk to young people, highlighting that lack of bus routes on event days lead to young girls walking home alone. In concluding, they asked partners where they had consulted young people, and whether they would commit to consulting young people going forward. Chris Whyte acknowledged the concerns raised, agreeing that consultation with young people was an area to develop, and in relation to the specific personal experiences shared agreed to pass those on to the Stadium who had a very strong regime to ensure safeguarding was given full attention. He took away a commitment to develop that conversation with young people so that their views and experiences were taken into account. Peter Dearden added that an Independent Advisory Group with representation from every stadium in London convened quarterly and it may be appropriate to invite BYP to those meetings in order to guide that group in terms of safety and security. He agreed to look into what opportunities young people had as a touchpoint for the local police with the local neighbourhood teams and reporting issues in the moment.

Brent Youth Parliament also felt that young people were not reaping the benefits of living in the borough through complimentary tickets to events, work experience opportunities and visits to the Stadium, highlighting that some people had lived in Brent all their lives but never visited the Stadium. Mark Lynch responded that 58,000 tickets had been distributed to local residents last year, which represented a 64% increase from the year before. The Stadium had also hosted over 100 students from 8 primary schools in December 2025 at the Wembley Pitch Day, who had been able to play football on the pitch, and seen 1,000 people from the local community attend Stadium tours, which included young people. In relation to employment opportunities, the Stadium worked with the King’s Trust to provide local young people work experience opportunities at Wembley, 14 of which had subsequently secured employment with the FA or as Wembley Stadium contractors. He also drew attention to the new Brent Giving charity that the FA was partnering on, which would announce its first grant programme worth £80k at the end of the month that local community organisations could bid for.

The Committee asked whether there were any other areas partners felt were not working and required improvements. Tom Legg felt that there was work that could be done to improve the way pre-event information was provided, and the FA was carefully reviewing some technology applications they could utilise to better prepare local residents and businesses of upcoming event impact. Another way to get better at ensuring local residents and businesses were aware of events coming up was to better liaise with different local groups. Some of this work, such as better co-ordination with local community groups, could be done in a short timeframe, but the tech solution for event information was linked with the development of the Wembley Stadium app which had a medium-term timeline. The Committee asked that a timeline was shared with the Committee that enabled members to review actions against the timeline to see how actions were progressing. They also asked for key themes coming out of the engagement piece with local residents, businesses, schools and groups to be shared with the Committee to provide a holistic picture of the key issues. Tom Legg agreed to take away those actions, highlighting that he was proud of the establishment of the resident group, which had met in December with good positivity around that group. He could share the minutes of that meeting with the Committee.

From Chris Whyte’s perspective, he felt that the main large area of outstanding improvement needed was around traffic and parking on event days. The Committee challenged whether the Council having its own car parks available on event days helped the situation, and Chris Whyte acknowledged that this could encourage people to drive to events, but added that Fryent Country Park was only used for very exceptional occasions, and there was work underway to promote the public transport message and review traffic. Tom Legg added that the FA had committed to spend £100k on a detailed transport study for the West of the estate, and an additional £200k on mitigation measures in consultation with the Highways Team at Brent based on the findings of that study.

The Committee felt that, in addition to the mitigations that took place on event days to deal with issues as they happened, there was also a responsibility on the FA to have year-round communications with all teams to ensure they knew what their responsibilities were and could disseminate information to fans. Tom Legg responded that the FA was clear on its position that those in football had a collective responsibility to improve fan behaviour. The FA had invested heavily in recent years to drive specific communications programmes designed to improve fan behaviour, but it was highlighted that this could only be achieved together, so there was a large amount of collaboration across all levels of football both at the professional level and grassroots.

Further discussing resident engagement, the Committee asked what feedback the FA was hearing from residents from the various methods of engagement they were undertaking. Tom Legg advised that he chaired a Wembley Stadium Resident Association Group which received a range of different feedback from each event held at the stadium, and the majority of feedback pointed to the improved communications piece in terms of event days. Some feedback also pointed to better calibrating the way events were resourced and delivered, and he highlighted that it was difficult to ensure that the appropriate level of mitigation measures were in place given that the events delivered at the national stadium were very different by nature, and the resourcing that might be deployed for concerts in the summer months would be very different from the resources deployed for an FA Cup final. He advised that all partners worked hard to ensure the enforcement measures being deployed were appropriate and aligned to the detailed risk assessments and risk ratings and categories of those events, which took time, co-ordination, accurate data, and feedback from the residents to get right. In response to whether there were any areas partners were looking to scale back measures, Tom Legg added that the approach to Best in Class and Zone Ex was to have the foundation blocks in place, such as toilet units, which were imperative for the delivery of every event, and then ensure resourcing levels were geared towards either safeguarding to protect young audiences or designed to mitigate the risk of ASB.

Noting reference in the report to Corporate Gold and Silver under section 1.3.16, the Committee asked how this was determined. Jehan Weerasinghe advised that this concerned the level of seniority of officer response, with himself and Chris Whyte at Gold Level and Heads of Service and middle managers at Silver Level.

In concluding the discussion, the Committee asked how assured the Council was that the co-operation between multi-agency partners sufficiently prepared organisations to respond to emergency situations on event days. Chris Whyte responded that he was very proud of the arrangements in place to ensure safe and secure events in and around the Stadium. He highlighted that the control room was very high tech and supported by the Council’s own control room, and the measures in place across all partners ensured that the delivery of events were Best in Class.

As no further issues were raised, the Chair drew the discussion to close and invited the Committee to make recommendations with the following RESOLVED:

i)               To recommend that partners involved in delivering safe and secure events at Wembley Stadium engaged children and young people in their arrangements in order to understand the specific issues affecting children and young people on event days. This could include representation from children and young people on advisory boards.

ii)              For future reviews to Committee to include impact data from the improvement actions.

A number of information requests were also made during the discussion, recorded as follows:

i)               To receive a timeline for future improvement actions.

ii)              To receive the minutes of the most recent resident engagement meeting.

iii)             To receive an outline of the themes and issues being raised during resident engagement events.