Planning for the Leicester City Football Club victory parade

Abstract

This paper details the multiagency planning for and delivery of the Leicester City Football Club victory parade at the end of the 2015/16 football season to celebrate the team winning the Barclays Premier League. This is compared and contrasted with the planning and delivery of the reinterment of the mortal remains of King Richard III, which took place in Leicester a little more than 12 months prior. Both events were unprecedentedly high-profile for a comparatively small city and the routes involved had much in common. However, the amount of time to plan each event differed greatly: approximately 18 months for the reinterment and just five weeks for the victory parade. The events were largely un-ticketed but with very different crowd profiles. This paper describes the background to both events; their context and setting; the structure of the planning groups; contingency planning considerations and implementation; pre-event exercises; command, control and coordination arrangements; business continuity issues; communications and lessons learned.