Safety Advisory Group visit and Club actions

Several supporters have asked the Club what we had to do at the ground following the recent Safety Advisory Group (SAG) visit which caused a temporary delay in supporters coming back into Twerton Park.

As background, the SAG is co-ordinated by Bath & North East Somerset (B&NES) council and made up of representatives from B&NES council, the emergency services, other relevant bodies and Club representatives. They operate as a forum for discussing and advising on public safety at events and aim to help organisers with planning and managing events, and to encourage cooperation and coordination between all relevant agencies. It is a requirement for us at Bath City FC to get a Safety Certificate from the SAG due to Twerton Park being a Designated Sports Ground but, due to the pandemic, the planned SAG visit in the summer of 2020 didn’t happen.

However, most of the actions requested in the recent inspection were quite minor, with a couple requiring a bit more organising and specialists to attend Twerton Park, write reports and some further works being completed.

The two main areas requiring this extra level of work were firstly the testing of the barriers in the Popular Stand and the Main Grandstand. This has now been done and the follow up report is imminent. And secondly, we were asked to get a new structural survey and report to complete our Structural Maintenance Certificate. The move to Tier 3 in late December and subsequent National Lockdown have frustrated efforts to complete this element so far, but we now have an appointed provider and expect the assessment to begin soon.

We also had to renew some testing of our emergency lights, Fire Risk Assessments, plus complete an updated Electrical Installation Condition report, all of which we have either completed or are in the process of doing.

We will issue further updates in due course.