British public has ‘run out of patience’ with football’s failure to reform itself

The British public has “run out of patience” with English football’s failure to reform itself, the sports minister, Nigel Huddleston, has said, as he confirmed legislation for an independent regulator would be in place before the next general election.

The government has endorsed 10 key principles in Tracey Crouch’s fan-led review into football governance, with a new regulator the central idea among them. Huddleston said government also expects the Premier League to distribute more money across the football pyramid and for a solution to be agreed with the Football League before the summer.

“We’ve all got incredibly frustrated over years, in fact decades, of football recognising it’s got problems and singularly failing to sort them out,” Huddleston said. “Quite frankly I think the British public and football fans in particular have run out of patience, and there is a need to intervene.”

While responses to the government’s decision to support the Crouch review were largely positive, some, including Crouch herself, said the lack of a timeline for delivery of new legislation was “worrying”. Huddleston insisted the government had committed to bringing a regulator into law before the next election, which is currently scheduled for 2024.

“There are some people expecting this is going to happen tomorrow or next week and there are other people thinking it’s two years but we do have the commitment to get this done before the next election,” he said. “We want to move forward quickly because we know there’s overwhelming demand for this and we know the problems in football. But if we implemented it tomorrow we could have exactly the opposite impact of what we are intending: making sure that clubs can survive and that they are