Hammers United were pleased to meet with the club on Wednesday 2 June, to discuss our Supporter Vision.
Our vision was created following an intense period of work behind the scenes, after the closure of our supporter survey. Over 5,000 West Ham fans took part in our supporter survey in December 2020, giving us a detailed breakdown of what is important to them at West Ham United. We closely analysed that data and our supporter vision was then launched, via our website, on Tuesday 18 May.
You can see a breakdown of the survey results that helped us to craft our vision here and you can read that vision for supporter engagement here.
Early in 2021, West Ham United agreed to operate under a Memorandum of Understanding for supporter engagement, created by a newly formed committee. This committee is made up of all the FSA affiliated independent supporters’ associations at West Ham United (The ISC).
As a founder member of that committee, Hammers United entered into a two-tier system of dialogue with the club. All member groups have representation at ISC meetings with the club. All member groups also have access to Structured Dialogue. Structured Dialogue allows a group from the ISC to engage directly with the club on matters of particular interest to its members.
We would like to thank Jake Heath (Supporter Liaison Officer at West Ham United) and Ashley Brown (Head of Supporter Engagement at the FSA) for initiating a Structured Dialogue meeting with Hammers United on Wednesday 2 June, to discuss our vision.
We are pleased to report to our members that we feel the meeting was a further signal of positive intent from the club, around building a robust engagement process with independent supporters’ groups.
Discussions centred around some of the six principles for supporter engagement and how the club and the ISC might feed into this as an evolving piece of work. Hammers United expressed their interest in producing alternative formats of our vision targeted at specific stakeholders. We are excited by the prospect that one of those formats could be a version that is relevant to all groups on the ISC, which both the ISC and the club could endorse.
The club have invited us to meet again in the close season to continue these discussions.
The club also reaffirmed their commitment to working with Hammers United and the ISC on the top two priorities identified at our last Structured Dialogue meeting and referenced in our vision. Namely ‘the look and feel of The London Stadium’ and ‘bringing more local businesses and sellers to The London Stadium’.
Hammers United are pleased to be able to take this opportunity to update it’s membership over ongoing dialogue and will now present a detailed report to its full committee. Hammers United will then work with the ISC to create a format for this content that is applicable to the ISC as a whole, before presenting this to the ISC and the club. This will be with a view to further discussion around finalising a format that all parties might be able to endorse.
Hammers United is an FSA affiliated independent supporters association and you can join our 18,000 strong membership for free here.
