Going back to my comments about the terrace looking bigger than what the stated capacity in the plans is. I have looked into the official Green Guide for sports stadium safety
link:
http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov. ... rounds.pdfThis stipulates that the maximum density of people per 10meters squared of terrace is 47.
By looking at the stadium plans, i can see that Saints have adopted a far lower density for the terrace.
My calculations put the density at 37.6 people per 10 metres squared of terrace (please dont ask about how do you work out half a person, its merely a statistical calculation)
From looking at the green guide i can see that there is something called the "S" factor in terrace capacity calculations. This is used to adjust the maximum density, based on a number of things such as a clubs proven ability to keep terrace gangways clear, and also evacuate a stadium within the required timescales. If a club has failed to show it can hit these targets, then the "s" factor is used to reduce the density.
It would therefore appear to me that because the club have yet to prove they can properly steward the new terraces, that the "s " factor is less than 100% of maximum legal capacity and has infact been set at approximately 80% of maximum spectator density.
This throws up the rather interesting possibility that further down the line, Saints may be able to increase the stadiums capacity, through merely being able to show good crowd management.
Ive calculated that the home terrace capacity may be able to go from 3800 to 4773, while the away terrace could go from 3940 upto 4923. Please note i have not included disabled spectator capacity in these figures as they would not change.
This represents an increase of 1956
If we add this onto the current stadium capacity of 17984 we arrive at a figure of 19940.
Of course the flipside is that if Saints show they cant manage a crowd at the current agreed capacity of 17984, then the stadium will have its capacity cut. This happened at the Halliwell Jones in Warrington, whereby a ground projected to have a capacity of 14200 had it cut to just over 13k.
This does make me wonder if Saints have learned from Wires experience, and rather than going for maximum terrace capacity from the off, they have adopted a more conservative outlook and gone for a capacity that should not cause any stadium management issues.
Something else to note, is that prior to the Hillsborough disaster, it was legal to have 54 people for 10 metres squared. This would have given the new west terrace a capacity of 5485 back in the 1980's.
