York Racecourse takes it responsibility in relation to customer care and crowd safety very seriously and invests significant manpower, equipment and resources to help ensure racegoers have a safe and enjoyable raceday.
 
York Racecourse will not tolerate anti-social behaviour and has a robust set of policies and procedures that seeks to prevent or, if necessary on rare occasions, deal with it should it occur.  We have a strong working partnership with both North Yorkshire Police and our security provider to deal with any instances appropriately.

York Racecourse has a zero tolerance policy in regards to the use of illegal drugs. Working alongside North Yorkshire Police, the presence of sniffer dogs, bag searches, participation in the Pace Yourself Plus initiative, as well as monitoring of toilets, are all accepted as positive steps in addressing this challenge for wider society.  No racegoer should consider attempting to bring drugs to York – they risk arrest and a lifetime banning order, not to mention confiscation.

Quite properly, the racecourse is held to account on its licensing obligations, with a member of the City of York Council team normally present on a raceday. This team regularly conduct full, unannounced, audits of the practices and procedures across the site, with the officers very positive about the policies and procedures in place at York.  All bar staff are trained with specific regard to the Licence requirements and we conduct extensive internal tests to ensure continued compliance on a daily basis. Both North Yorkshire Police and the Council team made specific mention of the due diligence in our systems after their last audit.

York Racecourse plays an active role in the nationwide “Pace Yourself and drink responsibly” campaigns devised in association with the Drink Aware charity in partnership with The Racecourse Association.  As examples, there are regular messages on the CCTV and in the racecard, tap water is provided free of charge in jugs on all bars that have a plumbed water supply, with access to external taps for those who bring water bottles.

York Racecourse fully funds the support of North Yorkshire Police and other services at the Racecourse. On a typical Saturday, there will be 50 police officers inside the gates as well as 150 specialist stewards and a further 150 members of raceday staff.  We have a state of the art Control Room staffed with representatives of the police, medical and stewarding teams, monitoring 40 CCTV cameras across the site.

We wanted to share the above information as a reassurance ahead of what we trust will be an enjoyable experience.