When the Decision is Made: Lessons from the Maccabi Tel Aviv Ban on Why Engagement Matters Most After You’ve Decided

Recent reporting on a police decision to prevent supporters of Maccabi Tel Aviv football club from attending a match in England has raised important questions for public authorities about public engagement and decision-making. Not about whether the decision itself was right or wrong, but about what should happen once a difficult decision has been taken and how public institutions engage with those affected by police decisions.

The Home Secretary’s intervention was notable. Her concern wasn’t simply about operational judgement. It was about leadership, process and whether the police had engaged properly before and after reaching their conclusion. That distinction matters. It points to a recurring challenge in public decision-making: organisations often focus heavily on arriving at an outcome but give far less attention to how that outcome is explained, tested and owned in public.

This article uses the case as a learning opportunity. It doesn’t revisit the merits of the decision. Instead, it asks a different question: when police forces make high-impact decisions under pressure, what does good engagement look like once the decision has been made? And what risks arise when that engagement is absent or poorly handled?

Decisions don’t end when they’re made

Senior leaders often treat decisions as an endpoint. A choice is made, authority is exercised, and attention moves on.

For high-profile policing decisions, that assumption is problematic.

Decisions that affect identity, safety or community confidence don’t conclude when the internal sign-off is complete. In many cases, that’s when the most sensitive phase begins: the phase where legitimacy is tested, trust is either strengthened or weakened, and reputational risk emerges.

In the football case, the decision was communicated as a safety measure, yet those affected struggled to understand the basis for it. Explanations shifted. Evidence was questioned. Some stakeholders felt excluded altogether. That sequence turned a security judgement into a wider governance issue.

The Home Secretary’s response reflected this reality. Her focus was on whether the process met the standard expected of a public body exercising significant power.

That’s an important signal for any organisation operating in a high-scrutiny environment.

Engagement isn’t the same as agreement

One persistent misunderstanding is that engagement is about seeking permission or consensus. It isn’t.

Engagement is about fairness, transparency and informed decision-making. It’s about allowing those affected to understand the reasoning, test assumptions and raise consequences that decision-makers may not see from inside the organisation.

In policing, this matters particularly. Decisions are often taken quickly. Intelligence may be partial. Risk assessments may rely on tools or data that are unfamiliar to the public. In such conditions, engagement acts as a stabiliser.

In the case in question, parts of the justification relied on technical assessments that weren’t well explained externally. That created space for confusion and mistrust. Once the narrative becomes unclear, it’s very difficult to regain control of it.

A key question for leaders: if you can’t explain a decision clearly to those affected, how confident are you that it will withstand scrutiny later?

What good engagement looks like after a decision

Even where time pressures or security constraints make prior consultation difficult, there’s still a responsibility to engage properly once a decision has been reached.

Best practice suggests several clear steps:

Identify who is affected, not just who is vocal. In this case, community groups felt the impact directly but weren’t engaged early enough. Mapping stakeholders after the decision should be immediate and deliberate.

Explain the reasoning in plain terms. Not slogans or reassurances, but a clear account of what risks were identified, what options were considered, and why this option was chosen. Where information can’t be shared, say so explicitly and explain why.

Create space for questions and challenge. Engagement should not be a press release. It’s a process. That may involve meetings with community representatives, briefings for elected officials, or facilitated discussions where concerns can be aired safely.

Acknowledge uncertainty and error where it exists. Public confidence isn’t undermined by admitting limitations. It’s undermined by overconfidence that later proves unfounded. In this case, later reviews identified problems with the evidence base. That finding would have landed very differently if the organisation had been open from the outset about the limits of the information available.

Find Time. As highlighted above, policing bodies often have intelligence that is partial and is under significant time pressure; however, stepping back and seeking a second opinion – internally or externally (such as tCI) can provide an important second perspective.

The role of leadership and assurance

The Home Secretary framed the issue as one of leadership. That’s significant.

Senior leaders are responsible not only for what decisions are made, but for the quality of the process around them. That includes ensuring that engagement is planned, resourced and taken seriously.

Where decisions are likely to be contentious, leaders should ask some basic questions early:

• Who will feel the impact of this decision most sharply?
• How will they experience the way it’s communicated?
• What questions will they ask that we can’t yet answer?
• Who is testing our assumptions from the outside (e.g. tCI)?

These are assurance questions. They’re about governance, not just communications.

Independent advice and challenge can play a valuable role here. A critical friend approach can surface risks that internal teams may miss, particularly where pressure and confirmation bias are present. The absence of such challenge often only becomes visible after reputational damage has occurred.

AI, complexity and public understanding

The use of advanced tools such as AI in policing introduces an additional engagement challenge. Technical systems can support decision-making, but they don’t remove the duty to explain decisions in human terms. If anything, they increase it. When the public hears that an algorithm or automated tool played a role, questions are inevitable: How reliable is it? What data does it use? Who checked the output? How much weight did it carry in the final judgement? If these questions aren’t anticipated and addressed, trust erodes quickly. People don’t need to understand the technical detail, but they do need to understand that human judgement was applied and that safeguards were in place.

This again points to the importance of engagement after decisions are made. Silence or vague reassurance in the face of complexity in our experience in not effective.

Engagement as risk management

Too often, engagement is treated as a compliance activity or a communications function. In reality, it’s a form of risk management. Poor engagement doesn’t just upset stakeholders. It creates exposure. Legal risk. Political risk. Operational risk. Reputational risk. In the Maccabi Tel Aviv case, what began as a public order issue escalated into the national press. Confidence in leadership was affected. Relationships with communities were strained. External intervention followed. None of that was inevitable.

Robust engagement wouldn’t have removed all criticism, but it could have reduced misunderstanding, corrected errors earlier, and demonstrated procedural fairness.

That’s the core lesson for senior decision-makers.

Questions leaders should be asking

Cases like this should prompt reflection across policing and beyond:

• When was the last time you tested how a major decision would land with those affected?
• Do your teams see engagement as integral to decision-making or as something added afterwards?
• Who provides independent challenge when decisions are taken under pressure?
• How confident are you that your processes would withstand ministerial or judicial scrutiny?

These aren’t theoretical questions. They’re practical ones with real consequences.

Moving forward

Public institutions are judged not only by the decisions they take, but by how they take them. In high-pressure environments, it’s tempting to narrow focus to immediate risks and operational outcomes. Yet legitimacy, trust and confidence are built through process: through engagement, through openness, through fairness.

The Maccabi Tel Aviv case illustrates what can happen when that balance is lost. But it also offers valuable lessons for improvement.

For policing leaders and senior practitioners across the public sector, the opportunity is clear: invest in engagement not as an afterthought but as an essential part of good decision-making. Build assurance mechanisms that test assumptions before they become problems. Create cultures where explaining complex decisions clearly is seen as a strength, not a burden.

Difficult decisions may be unavoidable. But poor engagement never is.

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How tCI Can Help

Advice and Guidance
A tCI faculty member will work alongside you to support the development of your decisions and engagement approach. We provide independent, constructive advice at critical stages, helping you strengthen stakeholder mapping, test communication strategies, and plan robust post-decision engagement. Our role is to act as a critical friend, offering practical recommendations grounded in consultation law and good practice that build confidence in your process.

Risk Assessment
Early identification of legal, political or reputational risks in your engagement approach. Using tCI’s five-risk methodology, we spot gaps before challenge arises, helping you strengthen stakeholder communication and demonstrate procedural fairness from the outset.

Executive Briefings
Concise updates for senior leaders on consultation law, engagement duties and post-decision risks. Helps boards and leadership teams make confident, defensible decisions when under pressure, with clear guidance on what good engagement looks like after difficult choices are made.

Whether you’re preparing for a high stakes service change or building defensible evidence for complex decisions, we can help.

Contact tCI: hello@consultationinstitute.org