Jerry St ClairDirk Gently Shouting at the club and the stewards is utterly pointless - they are only doing what they have to do.
Not quite.
The Dept of Culture Media and Sport state that in managing persistent standing in seated areas it is "down to professionals on the ground to........decide the best way of dealing with the issue of fans who persistently stand". There is huge scope for interpretation here and probably explains why the safety officers at Wigan and Bristol City (to name but two) have absolutely no intention of attempting to make fans sit down.
RFC seem to be taking an extremely zealous approach despite the room for manouver this policy appears to give them.
Yes, a lot of it depends upon the zeal of the FLA inspector who is responsible for that club, and how much they can get the local council, who actually issue the safety licence, to be "bought into" their arguments. Reading Borough Council seem to be in the pocket of the FLA and so are more vigorous than some others in enforcing the regs - or at least ensuring that they are seen to be enforced.
A good example of things was at Leicester where, a few years ago, there was "a local agreement" between fans and the club's safety officer that standing would be tolerated if it was restricted to a specific block. This worked fine for a while - no accidents, no-one hurt, until the FLA got to hear about it and high-level pressure was brought to bear on the club. The safety officer got a flea in his ear from the top of the FLA and the conflict of trying to make people it was resumed.
Another example is a Pompey, where a new safety officer has arrived this season who is far more FLA-orientated and extremely zealous about enforcement. There is considerable conflict and lots of unhappy people there at the moment.
Where it does work is at another CCC ground (which I won't name), where the safety officer is more co-operative and with whom the supporters have agreed what "persistent standing" actually means. I'm not sure what the proportion of time it is, but in practice what happens is that fans stand for X minutes, then sit for Y minutes and so so throughout the game, so technically they are not "persistently standing." Common sense, it works, and much less conflict between supporters and stewards.
Sadly, I think the bods from the FLA and RBC who monitor Reading are too zealous for this to work here, as well as the RFC Safety Officer being too eager to stereotype those who want to stand as "potential trouble-makers" - plus I think there are too few Reading supporters who want to stand enough or who are prepared to get properly organised for something like that to work here.