Wolves granted licence for safe standing at Molineux

Starting from the home game against Spurs on March 4, the barrier seats at Molineux will officially change to safe standing areas after Wolves became the fifth Premier League club to be granted the licence.

Wolves became the first Premier League club to install barrier seating in the summer of 2019, and then aimed to take part in the safe standing trial among several other clubs in 2021.

However, Wolves withdrew their application for that trial as they would have needed to install barriers in the away end.

Now, the club have added 585 barriers to seats in the Steve Bull stand, and as a result the club have been granted their licence for safe standing, which will see legal standing at Molineux for the first time since 1993.

Wolves now offer 5,553 seats in the Sir Jack Hayward Stand, 2,115 seats in the Stan Cullis Stand and 585 seats in the Steve Bull Lower Stand – meaning there is a total of 8,253 licensed standing seats across the stadium.

Wolves’ facilities, safety and security director Steve Sutton said: “We are absolutely delighted to have been granted this license after many, many years of hard work by a number of people.

“We have listened to feedback from our fans and played an active role in supporting the process, including taking part in the research, that has led to this historic change in policy.”

This change comes after sporting director Matt Hobbs pledged to 'keep developing' the club across the board.

He said: “It’s important that we keep developing the whole football club. You want to keep developing all departments but it’s a gradual process and not something we can change overnight.

“Molineux is an ongoing topic and things are in the pipeline, I spoke about the women and girls and us supporting them, and the academy has grown substantially since my time at the club, and what we’re offering, we’ve probably outgrown that building. We’ve got some development to do at Compton as well, just to make sure we keep our facilities mirroring that of the first-team as we’re trying to keep everything elite – but that again takes time.

“We’ve concentrated on the window now, but I have to ensure that we don’t just look at the first-team and the scope is a bit wider than that. We need to ensure everything develops at the same rate and we support those other areas of the club.”

As a result of this change, the club have already introduced updated ground regulations, which includes a new code of conduct for supporters in safe standing seats.

Wolves will also face additional scrutiny from authorities for persistent standing in other areas of the stadium. The club will need to ensure measures are in place to mitigate that otherwise they could be punished and seats could be made unavailable for future games.

Any supporters with questions on the change can contact Fan Services on fanservices@wolves.co.uk or 01902 810485.