Police chiefs gave Hillsborough a clean bill of health while a more junior officer was raising concerns about the ground, the inquest into the football disaster has heard.
But Terence Stuart, the former head of the South Yorkshire Police (SYP) unit responsible for public order and football matches, denied there was "complacency" within the force and told the jury it was "stunning" to now be shown an internal memo raising concerns about the stadium.
The retired officer was questioned about his involvement with Hillsborough in the years before the disaster when he was the superintendent in charge of the Force Operations division, with responsibility for policing football matches and was also the footbll liaison officer for South Yorkshire Police.
He left the post just a month before the disaster on April 15 1989 when 96 Liverpool fans were crushed to death on the Leppings Lane terrace of the ground during an FA Cup semi-final.
Mr Stuart was asked about a paper trail of numerous letters and memos dating back to the 1980s involving Hillsborough.
The jury was shown a memo from an Inspector Calvert on 'F' Division of SYP, covering the Hillsborough stadium, to his boss, the Chief Superintendent, dated June 11 1986.
In it the inspector complained of "crowd access to the Leppings Lane" and "congestion due to crash barriers" but approaches to the club had met with "little success in many cases".
Mr Stuart said such matters were not brought to his attention and that he had never seen the document in his life.
The inquest continues.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article