Football Banning Order

Section 14A of the Football Spectators Act 1989 governs orders made on conviction: it applies "where a person (the 'offender') is convicted of a relevant offence", and "the court must make a banning order in respect of the offender unless the court considers that there are particular circumstances relating to the offence or to the offender which would make it unjust in all the circumstances to do so" — making the order effectively mandatory on conviction absent particular circumstances. A separate route under section 14B allows a magistrates' court to make a banning order on a complaint by the police, without a conviction, where the person has caused or contributed to violence or disorder in the UK or elsewhere and there are reasonable grounds to believe an order would help prevent football-related violence or disorder. Section 14F fixes the duration bands: "where the order is made under section 14A above in addition to a sentence of imprisonment taking immediate effect, the maximum is ten years and the minimum is six years"; "in any other case where the order is made under section 14A above, the maximum is five years and the minimum is three years"; and orders made under section 14B (the police-application route) carry the same three-to-five year range as the non-custodial section 14A case.

A banning order can require the subject to report to a police station and surrender their passport ahead of regulated matches outside the UK, and to comply with any other requirements imposed to prevent them attending controlled matches (including overseas tournaments). Breach of a banning order is a criminal offence. The 3–10 year overall range described in the existing glossary entry (spanning the 3–5 year non-custodial band and the 6–10 year band for orders accompanying immediate imprisonment) remains the current position under the Act as amended; the mandatory-order test was itself amended by the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022, which tightened the previous discretionary wording.