Its all very simple.
The ground is allowed to let in 32k people to watch games.
The Police and SAG advise the club on segregation and away numbers.
The club can choose or not choose to take this advice.
If fans safety is put at risk then the club is liable to prosecution and a reduction in capacity.
However the authorities cannot reduce the capacity of the stadium willy nilly. It has to go through the correct legal channels and has to be for a valid reason.
If they had at any point reduced the capacity of the ground it would've been in the news, as such action is highly unusual.
The SAG and Police will always advise the maximum amount of segregation as it is their job to push for maximum safety, just like all those covid scientists that would still have us in lockdown. In the real world risk is traded off against living a life and running a business
Couple of points, good luck letting in more people than the SAG advice and maintaining valid event insurance. Also the council can ultimately dictate the license for the venue, if the club ignore the advice of the SAG the licensing committee may not look too kindly on it, I doubt Frasers would be happy if the club put the venues license to hold events at risk
Even if you believe the council and / or police can't directly force the club to have empty seats on Sunday they sure as hell can make things very difficult if the club goes against their advice
Lets be honest, the council make it up as they go along, the no parking zone was only supposed to be in place for events above a certain capacity according to their own documentation yet when we were getting below that number it remained in place
That said the club should come out and be very clear about why those blocks aren't being on sale, its ridiculous. Its one thing when there's thousands of empty seats in the ground but that's not the case now and if it is on police / council advice they should be put in a position where they have to justify that position, Gilbert needs to get on the case