Sports ground safety
A safety certificate is not a document you file once. It carries conditions, and the capacity it permits is calculated from the condition of the ground as it is now.
What the law requires
The Safety of Sports Grounds Act 1975 allows the Secretary of State to designate sports grounds, and a designated ground may not admit spectators without a safety certificate issued by the local authority. The Fire Safety and Safety of Places of Sport Act 1987 extends certification to regulated stands at grounds that are not designated. Certificates carry conditions covering matters such as capacity, stewarding, exits and record-keeping. The Guide to Safety at Sports Grounds — the Green Guide — sets out how permitted capacity is calculated, and the Sports Grounds Safety Authority licenses grounds used by clubs in the top two divisions in England and Wales.
Legislation referred to on this page: Safety of Sports Grounds Act 1975 · Fire Safety and Safety of Places of Sport Act 1987 · Guide to Safety at Sports Grounds (the Green Guide). Named so you can read the source. Nothing on this page is legal advice, and whether a duty applies to your organisation is a question for you and your adviser.
Who it applies to
- Designated sports grounds, and grounds with a regulated stand accommodating 500 or more spectators.
- The certificate belongs to the ground and carries conditions specific to it — two clubs of similar size can hold quite different obligations.
- Smaller clubs and undesignated grounds still carry the ordinary premises duties, and Martyn's Law turns on capacity rather than on designation.
What you have to be able to show
The list an inspector, insurer or auditor actually works through.
- The current safety certificate and every condition attached to it.
- How permitted capacity was arrived at, and any factor that has since reduced it.
- Structural and annual inspection records for stands and terracing.
- Stewarding: numbers, training and deployment on a given day.
- Records of exits, barriers, and crowd-control equipment being checked.
- Event-day logs, including anything that went wrong and what was done.
How DutyHub records it
DutyHub does not carry out any of the work below. It records who did, when, and what they found.
The certificate and its conditions
Each condition becomes a duty on the register with its own evidence and review, rather than one document that is either present or absent.
Event-day checks
Barrier, exit and turnstile checks run as scheduled checks with QR labels, completed at the point of the check on a match day rather than written up on Monday.
Stewarding as people records
Training and certification carry expiry, so falling below the numbers the certificate assumes is visible before the fixture, not after.
Inspections chased ahead
Structural and annual inspections are certificates with lead times, chased far enough ahead that a specialist can actually be booked.
Start with what applies to you
Add your premises and answer a short set of questions about them. DutyHub works out which duties land on which building, and shows you the gaps before anybody else finds them.
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