FA’s latest guidelines on the roadmap to the return of football

From the FA:

Latest guidance for ‘non-elite’ football in step 3 of the Government’s roadmap

On Monday 17 May, as part of the next step of the Government’s roadmap out of national lockdown, there will be further changes to the restrictions on ‘non-elite’ football. Our guidance has therefore been updated to reflect this.

This updated guidance comes into effect on Monday 17 May and until then all participants should follow our guidance for Step 2 which can be found here. You can read the Government guidance here.

The key changes to be aware of are:-

Spectators
From Step 3, spectators will be permitted to view events on both public and private land but need to adhere to social distancing rules and social gathering limits set at groups of 30 outdoors and six people/two households indoors. Please note that multiple numbers of these group sizes are permitted as long as social distancing rules are followed.

Spectators are allowed indoors, but the total number of all participants, coaches, officials and spectators must comply with the ventilation rates permitted by the particular venue. You can find more information about this here.

At larger events, capacity limits for spectators, set by The Government will apply. For indoor events this is 1000 or 50 per cent of capacity and for outdoor events this is 4000 or 50 per cent of capacity (whichever is lower in both cases).

Indoor Hospitality
As part of Step 3 of the Government’s roadmap out of lockdown, both outdoor and indoor hospitality at ‘non-elite’ football is permitted. All participants must follow Government guidance on hospitality settings and specific advice for sport facility operators available on the Government’s website. People using clubhouses and hospitality facilities must adhere to legal gathering limits and wider government guidance.

It is extremely important that clubs, players, coaches, match officials, league officials, volunteers, parents, carers, and facility providers continue to strictly follow both the UK Government’s latest guidance on COVID-19 and respective bespoke guidance documents from the FA. Any incidents of non-compliance should be reported to the local County Football Association.