In this unique case from Nottingham capacity of City Ground was reduced from 30,445 to zero for safety reasons. “No seats were hurt during the operation”, you might say.

Nottingham Forest are making headlines across the UK today due to their City Ground stadium being effectively banned from holding games with spectators. The Nottinghamshire County audit revealed that the city hasn’t got the required safety certification.

“It’s unusual, normally these things would be planned.” said Nottingham County Council’s service director for public protection Paul McKay. “They’ve had a named person, that person is unable to fulfill those duties at the moment so the club are looking to appoint a new safety certificate holder.”

“What I want to assure people is that we are working very closely with Forest. We had a number of meetings with them and we are hoping this might be resolved in the next few days.”

The safety certification is required before the stadium could host its first game in some three weeks. Introduced by legislation from 1970s, the certificate is applied not only to the specific stadium as a building, but also to a person responsible for maintaining its safe capacity at specified levels over time.