Simon Foster has said he will ‘follow the process’ and resisted calls to immediately fire West Midlands Police Chief Constable Craig Guildford over the scandal
January 16, 2026 15:20
Simon Foster, the Police and Crime Commissioner for the West Midlands, has been accused of offering a “blank cheque” to a mosque involved in the Maccabi fan ban scandal to apply for public funding.
Foster, a former chair of a local Momentum branch, is the only person who can sack West Midlands Police (WMP) Chief Constable Craig Guildford after the senior officer was accused of misleading Parliament over the decision-making process to support the ban.
WMP’s senior leadership previously told the Home Affairs Select Committee that the Birmingham Jewish community had supported the ban, but later walked back on the claim after leaked minutes of a meeting of the local council’s Safety Advisory Group (SAG), which ultimately made the decision to ban Maccabi Tel Aviv fans from a match against Aston Villa in November, that a number of communal groups had expressed concern it could be perceived as antisemitic.
Instead, they now claim that members of the community expressed their support privately and in confidence to officers, though there is no official record of this.
The force also admitted that a reference to a non-existent football match between Maccabi Tel Aviv and West Ham, which appeared in its intelligence report justifying the ban, was an error caused by the use of AI when compiling the document, despite initially denying this was the case.
Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood announced this week that she has "lost faith" in Guildford - but he has said that he will not resign.
Foster is the only person with the power to remove Guildford from his position, but has said that he wants to "follow the process" instead of taking immediate action.
Now, The Times has reported that Foster wrote a letter in support of a funding application for the Green Lane Mosque, which has a history of inviting extremist preachers to speak.
A JC investigation in 2023 found that one of the mosque’s regular speakers, Shaykh Abu Usamah at-Thahabi, gave a lecture in 2019 in which he labelled Jews “people of envy” who “killed the prophets and the messengers”.
The mosque took videos featuring al-Tahabi down and launched an investigation, saying he was an “external speaker” and not a member of staff.
At the time, a spokesperson said the mosque took pride “in upholding the laws of this country, and we reject violence and extremism unequivocally”.
"In accordance with these values, we developed a comprehensive Speaker Anti-Extremism Policy and Declaration in 2019. Everyone who preaches or speaks at Green Lane Mosque — including our own senior leaders — is required to sign it and abide by it,” they added”
Prior to the mosque receiving a £2 million public grant, which was later withdrawn after al-Tahabi’s case came to light, Foster responded to a request from the institution saying he would be "very happy" to support its funding application and that he was happy with the “impressive range of work” the mosque was doing.
While he has insisted that he only supported the application for one specific grant, documents obtained via a Freedom of Information request reportedly show he offered to write a “general letter of support” following the request for a document that could aid the mosque’s applications for other grants in future.
Foster later said that it was not until seven months after sending the letter that he became aware of the offending video clips, adding that he was "implacably opposed to any and all forms of extremism, hate, misogyny, homophobia and racism and that includes antisemitism”.
But unaffiliated peer, and JC director, Lord Austin said: "It is completely inappropriate for someone in his position to provide an institution with the equivalent of a blank cheque they can use for any application without scrutinising each one first, especially a mosque which has been accused of extremism or antisemitism.
"But this does show the cosy relationship between the PCC, the police and this local mosque, which is part of the problem this disgraceful episode has revealed."
The report comes after Nick Timothy, who was instrumental in exposing WMP’s intelligence report and has written for the JC about the scandal, was appointed Shadow Justice Secretary by Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch.
Timothy, the MP for West Suffolk, replaces Robert Jenrick, who was sacked after Badenoch was presented with “irrefutable” evidence that he was planning to defect to Reform UK.
Jenrick reportedly denied this when informed of his sacking by the Tory whips, but has since joined Reform, appearing at a press conference alongside party leader Nigel Farage on Thursday evening.
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