West Ham United. Lack of consultation with supporters groups and ISC.
Many of you recall Hammers United organising a static protest on Saturday January 18th 2020 to draw attention to the fact that the club was one of only two Premier League clubs that did not engage with its supporters groups as laid down in Football’s governance guidelines.
This was followed by the “Greenway Stroll” on Saturday 29 February, attended by 8,500 West Ham supporters, which was the catalyst leading to the formation of the West Ham United Independent Supporters Committee (ISC).
Hammers United agreed to join the ISC on the understanding that it would forgo its request for proportional representation in exchange for Structured Dialogue (SD) which meant that any supporter group could request a 1:1 meeting with the Club and the Club would be obliged to agree to such a request.
SD was written into the Memorandum Of Understanding (MOU) that was agreed by the ISC and the Club, which included another key point which clearly places an obligation on the Club, stating:‘The club is committed to positively engaging with the ISC at all times’.
There is an obligation on the ISC too, which is likewise firmly rooted in the MOU, and clearly states that a major part of the ISC’s role is “to ensure the club actively listens to supporters & takes their views into account at all levels of decision making.’
It is now almost two years since the formation of the ISC and, despite the terms of the MOU, It is the opinion of Hammers United that the Club is using the ISC as a box ticking exercise in order to satisfy its own need to be seen to engage with supporter groups without actually doing anything of value.
The ISC actually recognises that the Club is not adhering to the MOU and is not consulting meaningfully. The Interim Chair herself is on record saying so as recently as September 19th.
Meanwhile, Hammers United has continued to work on behalf of its members, challenging the Club on issues including Season Ticket cards, Champions Place Stones, catering prices and ‘The Wall’. We have taken up members’ complaints on seat relocations, mascots, ticketing and stadium bans.
Most recently we have had a good degree of success over the issuing of Season Ticket Cards (STC) which the Club offered to make available to anyone without a smartphone back in April but subsequently withdrew once the Season Ticket renewal window had closed.
Hammers United quickly launched a petition which received thousands of signatures and resulted in the Club backtracking and reinstating its offer of STCs. This was a clear demonstration of what can be achieved by an independent supporters’ group determined to represent its members’ interests.
What subsequently became apparent was that many of our members applied for a STC but had either received no response from the Club or their applications were rejected. We brought this to the attention of the Club’s Head of Ticketing who suggested we forward our members’ outstanding issues directly to her. Over the last 6 weeks we have been able to help many of our members obtain STCs.
However, it is not all good news. In recent days the Club has made it clear to us that it no longer wishes to deal with Hammers United directly and advised that we refer our members individually back to the Ticket Office. We all know the problems of long wait times, often being cut off without speaking to anyone and those fortunate enough to actually get through often get no help at all.
We wrote to the Club challenging them on this and we received an email from a member of the Club’s staff telling us that we should adhere to a new “communication process” which the Club had drawn up.
For reasons of confidentiality we cannot go into the details of this “communication process” but it must be made clear that it was only a proposal sent by the Club to the Chair of the ISC who subsequently distributed it to the ISC group members. This proposal has not been discussed, debated, voted on, endorsed or agreed by the ISC.
The email from the Club contained the following, “We’ve agreed that this is the process we must follow to ensure an efficient process for Club and supporters.”
We were surprised to find that the Club was under the impression that anything at all had been agreed, especially considering that one of the implications of such a “communications process” would require all communications with the Club to go via the Chair of the ISC.
We are of the opinion that any agreement to such a “communication process” would render the MOU broken as it would effectively rule out SD, not to mention putting Hammers United in a position where there would be no way of effectively representing our members directly with the Club.
This would result in many West Ham supporters being negatively impacted, not least our members who are still waiting for their STCs.
Hammers United’s committee will be meeting next week to discuss this. I will be strongly recommending the following:
1: That we oppose the Club’s proposed “communication process”.
2: That we recognise that this is an attempt by the Club to dictate the terms by which the ISC operates.
3: That the Club’s proposal will undermine the MOU.
4: That we seek the support of our ISC colleagues in this matter.
We will also be requesting an urgent meeting with the Football Supporters association to see how they can best support us in this.
The club simply has to engage and consult as per the MOU or the ISC serves no purpose at all. We will report back as events unfold.
COYI.
Paul Colborne.(Chair,Hammers United).
