Ipswich Town Football Club Company Ltd v Suffolk Constabulary

Whether police services are chargeable as Special Police Services under section 25 of the Police Act 1996 is fact- and context-sensitive. Preventative policing may fall within the ordinary operational duty or may constitute chargeable Special Police Services. Relevant considerations include the location of the service, the recipient’s control of the area, the service’s predominant purpose, whether it was requested, and its relationship to the recipient’s own activities. Public land is not automatically outside section 25, and private land is not automatically within it. Applying those principles, preventative and supportive policing in roads immediately adjoining a football stadium was chargeable because the club controlled the area for match-day purposes and the services were closely connected with chargeable policing inside the stadium.

The claimant football club sought a declaration concerning charges imposed by the defendant Chief Constable for policing services provided during matches. The disputed services were supplied in Portman Road and Sir Alf Ramsey Way, roads closed under a traffic control order and immediately adjoining the stadium entrances and turnstiles.

The parties agreed that chargeable services could be provided inside the stadium, while ordinary reactive or preventative policing in the wider locality could not ordinarily be charged. The central issue was whether the policing supplied in the traffic-control area was part of the police’s operational duty or constituted Special Police Services under section 25 of the Police Act 1996.

1. Statutory framework. Section 25 of the Police Act 1996 confers a power, not a duty, to provide chargeable Special Police Services at the request of a person, at premises or in any locality. A request is necessary but not sufficient. The statutory language is not confined to services supplied inside premises.
2. Applicable principles. The distinction between operational policing and Special Police Services is fact- and context-sensitive. There are no hard and fast rules. Reactive policing in response to actual or imminent crime or disorder is ordinarily operational. Preventative policing may be operational or chargeable, depending on the circumstances. Preventative policing on land controlled by the recipient is prima facie indicative of Special Police Services, while preventative policing on public land is prima facie operational, but neither consideration is decisive. The recipient’s benefit, the police’s resource discretion, the existence and character of the request, the nature of the event, and the relationship between the service and the recipient’s own functions are relevant. A service is not chargeable merely because it would not have been provided but for the event.
3. Application. The club had primary responsibility for safety, traffic and crowd control in the traffic-control area. It controlled access, erected barriers, managed queues and supported orderly entry and exit. The area was contiguous with the stadium, which the club held under a long lease, and the police presence was predominantly preventative, supportive and directed towards the club and its spectators. The services were a natural extension of the chargeable services supplied inside the stadium. The boundary of the traffic-control area marked a rational point at which that close nexus weakened substantially.
4. Disposition. The court held that policing services provided within the traffic-control area constituted Special Police Services for which charges could be imposed, and directed that an appropriate declaration be granted. Issues concerning recovery, limitation, set-off, quantum meruit and quantum were left for determination after further directions.

First-instance judgment. The judgment records the earlier decision in Leeds United Football Club Ltd v Chief Constable of West Yorkshire at [2012] EWHC 2113 (QB) and its appeal at [2013] EWCA Civ 115, but this was not an appellate stage in the present litigation.