Football clubs to get prosecutors

The initiative is aimed at collating evidence for banning orders

Every Premier and Football League club in England and Wales is to get its own dedicated prosecutor in an attempt to cut down on hooliganism.

The Crown Prosecution Service said the move would help in the gathering of evidence to take to a magistrate when applying for a football banning order.

More of the applications would be successful as a result, it said.

The system already operates in areas such as London, Manchester, Hampshire and West Yorkshire.

'Sufficient evidence'

Hampshire chief crown prosecutor Nick Hawkins told the BBC: "Where we have a prosecutor and a police officer working together, looking closely at the evidence, making sure that we target the right people, we get better results."

A football banning order can be obtained after a criminal conviction or through an application to magistrates based on a person's behaviour.

Mr Hawkins said: "For either application we've go to show sufficient evidence to satisfy a court.

"The closer we work together, the better we are at putting the appropriate evidence together.

"I'm talking about things like CCTV footage, evidence of misbehaviour on trains, behaviour in pubs outside grounds, and of course if people commit criminal offences."

Fewer police

Mr Hawkins said banning orders were "very effective" in dealing with troublemakers.

He said: "Two years ago in the World Cup in Germany we had 3,000 bans in force.

"One of the conditions is people surrender their passports when England play abroad. Not a single one of those convicted hooligans got to Germany.

"The end result was the German police policed English fans in a much more friendly way than they might have had to do if they were dealing with hooligans."

He added: "Domestically, there are many more games now where there are very few police officers inside the stadium. Indeed there are many where there are none at all."

Earlier this week, the Association of Chief Police Officers said football clubs should pay all the costs of policing games.

Clubs currently have to pay back only the costs incurred inside their ground or on their property, with the rest coming from police budgets.

The Premier League said clubs were meeting their legal duties to pay policing costs inside their grounds.

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