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Howard Webb, England’s chief refereeing officer, has vowed to continue increasing the talent pool from under-represented communities in English football’s officiating pathway, rejecting the wider backlash against diversity initiatives.
Addressing that historic under-representation has prompted a new direction. In June, the newly named Professional Referees’ Body (Pro Ref), formerly called Professional Game Match Officials, announced that Select Group 1, 2 and its supplementary list had been merged into a new, single Professional Referee Group in the men’s professional game and will largely service the Premier League and the Championship from the start of the 2026-27 season. Pro Ref said it would create flexibility in appointments and help to recognise a wider variety of talented match officials as part of the organisation’s new direction.
At a conference held at the Emirates Stadium by Bamref – an advocacy group that helps to give voice to Black, Asian and mixed-heritage officials – Webb told the Guardian that Pro Ref’s diversity drive fosters healthy and important competition. “We’re doing it to increase the quality of the officials working at the higher end of the game,” he said, insisting the decisions behind it are “born out of quality, rather than any other aspect”.
In March, Reform UK’s Suella Braverman wrote to the Football Association demanding that it scrap its target for a quarter of England men’s coaching staff to come from minority ethnic backgrounds by 2028, calling the approach “utter woke nonsense”. The FA responded by defending the target as part of its wider commitment to reflecting the diversity of the game. Similar pressure has surfaced in US sport, where the NFL’s Rooney Rule is now facing a legal challenge from Florida’s attorney general. In the UK, employers can encourage applications and provide targeted training for under-represented groups.
Webb argued that the visibility of refereeing makes tokenism impossible. “If you are not good enough to officiate in the Premier League you will be found out really quickly. There’s no real hiding places,” he said. A more diverse talent pool, he said, is “much more likely to bring higher levels of quality, greater choice, greater competition, and ultimately raising standards for all”.
Farai Hallam is the latest example, following Uriah Rennie and Sam Allison as the third Black referee to officiate in the Premier League. In a defining moment, he waved away a penalty claim for Manchester City against Wolves in January, rejecting the video assistant referee’s advice.
Danielle Every, the Pro Ref chief operating officer, said the organisation has seen a shift in attitudes since it introduced structural changes. “I genuinely feel that there is more acceptance and understanding of why these interventions are important,” she said, pointing to data showing zero Black representation among Premier League officials in 2022.
The stance comes as Pro Ref overhauls how it identifies talent. Webb described moving away from solely relying on the traditional observer system – in which officials were marked out of 10 after every match and ranked on a performance table – towards a coaching-led model built around a new “matchday performance developer” role. That model will be rolled out in League One and League Two as well as the women’s professional game. In the Premier League and Championship, the key match incidents panel, a primary layer of accountability, will remain. Referees at all levels expect their matches and performances to be subject to review by individual coaches.
The old system, Webb said, was “very rigid and restrictive”, and led to “some really good officials being left behind”. The change, he insisted, will help to surface talent from under-represented groups earlier than before.
Aji Ajibola, who co-founded Bamref in 2019, welcomed the progress on numbers but warned it counts for little without sustained backing once officials are inside the system. “We now have a duty of care to those that we’re bringing into officiating, to make them feel safe,” he said, describing plans for wraparound support covering mental health and wellbeing alongside coaching and mentoring.
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“We’ve got expertise in our community, which then creates opportunities for us to get into other areas of the game,” he said, framing retention, not recruitment, as the next front in the campaign.
Tension between visible progress and lived experience was echoed by Akil Howson, inducted into the Bamref Hall of Fame at this year’s conference after becoming the first Black official in an FA Cup final. “Broken down the barrier finally after 158 years and now hopefully that door will never be shut again,” he said of the milestone.
Howson, who is entering his fourth season as a Premier League official, was blunt about how far the game still has to go. “I still go to some of my meetings and I’m the only Black person,” he said. “It’s getting better, but it’s frustrating because it’s not where it could really be.”
On his induction into the hall of fame, Howson pointed to what it signals for those coming through behind him. “It just goes to show how important visibility and representation is.”
