In the aftermath of the disturbances at the Euro202 Final at Wembley Stadium the Council’s Resources and Public Realm Scrutiny Committee added an emergency item to its agenda and discussed what had happened with council officers before agreeing a recommendation to be made to the Cabinet.
Cllr Roxanne Mashari presented that recommendation yesterday. She said that there was public concern in Brent about the disturbances and resulting injuries as well as concern over the public health implications of what had been called the Wembley Covid Variant. The Committee had been disappointed with the lack of detail coming from officers.
Cllr Mashari thanked Brent CEO Carolyn Downs for sharing an incident report with the Chair and Vice Chair of the Committee as well as the Chair of the Community and Well Being Scrutiny Committee but was concerned at the lack of publicly available information regarding the Council’s activities and responsibilities on the day.
The Scrutiny Committee resolved that the Council should hold a public review into its actions before, during and after the Final to establish lessons learnt.
Responding the Leader of the Council, Cllr Butt, said that there were live cases going through the courts at present and no one from the Council or anyone else would be making any public statement about what had happened on that day.
He said that the Council would cooperate fully with the Casey Inquiry and went on to thank council officers for the work that they had done ‘going above and beyond what was actually required’ – work that had been in preparation over 3 years.
Cllr
Butt reiterated that it would be wrong to make any comment or to assert any wrongdoing
from anyone until investigations had concluded. He thanked everyone for
ensuring that the event place in very difficult and challenging circumstances. He added that the Government had recommended
that the number of people attending the matches should be staggered slowly and
that was exactly what had happened. The Council had played its full part in
making sure that that everyone who needed testing and support had it. Every
single service in the Council absolutely played its part and would continue to do so.
No other Cabinet member spoke, and no vote was taken on the Scrutiny Committee’s recommendation.
