The FAB Files #4: Heritage issues – protecting your club’s identity

The Independent Football Regulator (IFR) is now in place and clubs in the top five divisions must comply with the legislation it is tasked with enforcing. But how well do supporters’ organisations understand the Football Governance Act? And what role can Fan Advisory Boards (aka FABs which give this series its name) play in shaping decisions at their clubs?

Martin Cloake (right) has been heavily involved in the FSA’s policy work on this subject and he is kindly allowing us to reproduce this series of articles from his Substack (subscribe here). The latest in our series looks at how fan groups can use the legislation to protect their club’s heritage.

We talk a lot about heritage. It is important to us. We’ve argued it is an essential part of what our clubs are and why we follow them. And that has so often been dismissed. But things are different now. The Football Governance Act stops owners treating a club’s history as a brand to be updated, and instead turns heritage factors into issues that potentially merit legal protection. Protecting heritage is one of the Independent Football Regulator’s (IFR) three primary objectives (Part 2, section 6).

Schedule 4, Paragraph 4(3) lists the four key things the law now protects:

• Home ground: Where your team plays its matches.
• Emblem or crest: The physical symbol of the club.
• Home shirt colours: The visual identity of the team.
• Club name: The team’s historic identity.

One of the IFR’s core statutory objectives is to “safeguard the heritage of English football”. And remember, “English football” is only considered sustainable under this law if it continues to “serve the interests of fans” (see article 1 in this series).

So what new legal rights do fans have?

• Home ground: A club cannot move to a new ground without IFR approval. The IFR will only say yes if it is satisfied the move won’t cause “significant harm” to the club’s heritage and that the club has genuinely taken the views of fans into account. (Part 5, section 48).
• Crests and colours: A club is prohibited from making material changes to its crest or home shirt colours unless it can prove the changes are supported by a majority of the club’s fans. (Part 5, section 49).
• Club name: Any change to the name of a relevant team must be approved by the Football Association. (Part 5, section 49).

How can fans use these rights?

• Insist upon evidence : If your club suggests a “refresh” of the badge, fan groups can now legally demand: “Where is your evidence of majority fan support?”.
• Instigate consultation: Heritage is legally defined as a “relevant matter” for the Fan Engagement Threshold. This means if a club doesn’t consult you on heritage issues as we have described them above, it is failing its licence requirements. You don’t need to wait to be asked about these if you have grounds for concern.
• Use transparency: If a club enters administration or insolvency, it now has a legal duty to take reasonable steps to keep fans informed about what is happening, and fans are entitled to expect this.

(See: Part 5, section 51).

These rules ensure that owners are “custodians” rather than just owners. They cannot dismantle the history of a club without the fans’ consent. By making heritage a condition of the operating licence, the Act gives fans a legal “handbrake” to stop their club’s identity from being sold off or moved.

There are a couple of provisos here. In terms of relocating a club to a new ground, the ultimate arbiter is the IFR, and not the club or its fans, meaning our rights to be consulted do not amount to a veto. Why is this ?

Simply put, this is because, whilst where a club plays is obviously important, the IFR also has to ensure that it takes appropriate action to make sure the club remains sustainable. From an economic standpoint, sometimes the head will need to rule the heart – but fans will still get to make their views known. And the IFR will judge each case on its individual merits.

Secondly, disputes over ground relocation will, thankfully, be rare. It is far more likely that issues around badges and crests might cause controversy. As we have suggested elsewhere, not only do fans have a right to be consulted, they should be invited into dialogue by clubs before any decisions in principle are made. One of the long term aims of the IFR will be to ensure that this kind of dialogue happens as a matter of course.

• Read Part 1: How to use the Football Governance Act at your club
• Read Part 2: Strategic business plans and your right to influence
• Read Part 3: Corporate governance – keeping the plan on track

This article could not have been written without the assistance of Robbie Whittaker of the Blackpool Supporters Trust, whose knowledge of the legislation has proven invaluable to Martin and the FSA. Martin wants to be transparent that some of the basic research in this piece has been conducted with the assistance of Gemini Notebook, which cites original sourcing, but those sources have been checked by Robbie and Martin. All analysis and conclusions are those of Robbie and Martin too.

Martin Cloake’s The Football Fan is available to read for free via Substack.