‘No staff for passport scheme’

SPFL chief executive Neil Doncaster has warned there aren’t enough security staff in place to safely implement the Scottish Government’s vaccine passport scheme at football grounds.

With checks due to start from October 1 at games with more than 10,000 fans, Doncaster argued clubs haven’t had enough time to find extra stewards at a time when they are already in short supply. And he has asked Holyrood if money will be made available after revealing it will cost more than £5,000 per match to have the stewarding required. Urging politicians to adopt a ‘light touch’ approach to the scheme, which will ask fans to prove they’ve had two vaccinations or be denied entry, he insisted that an outer cordon of stewards at matches would be the only way to ensure there were no bottlenecks at turnstiles.

‘Creating an outer cordon is the only realistic way to implement spot-checking and it will clearly require a great many stewards,’ Doncaster told the Scottish Parliament’s Covid-19 recovery committee. ‘There is a real shortage of security staff and stewards. At the moment, it’s not clear how we will find those stewards.

‘I’ve had discussions with a number of clubs who have been involved, and they believe that the costs, purely in terms of stewarding and infrastructure, will be upwards of £5,000 per game. ‘That’s before any technology costs and, at the moment, it’s actually very difficult to put a finger on that, so there are significant costs per game. ‘Certainly, at the moment, it’s not clear how easy it will be to find the stewards. The only certainty is that there will be considerable additional costs.

We are in dialogue with Scottish Government officials as to what extent there may be support for those additional costs.’ Doncaster said the last time an outer cordon of stewards was used was at Hampden during this summer’s European Championships. He added: ‘That was with months of planning to allow physical infrastructure to be built.’