Football’s lawmakers are poised to approve video assistant referees at the World Cup this summer in spite of controversies during various international trials but the Premier League is unlikely to follow their lead immediately.

The International Football Association Board, consisting of British and Fifa representatives, met in the Dolder Grand hotel on the outskirts of Zurich on Friday night, just hours before it will vote on what could be the biggest change in world football in recent years.

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Snow meant the hotel was accessible only on foot or by four-wheel drive vehicle but the meeting will still go ahead. Representatives of the Scottish FA are taking part via video link after their travel plans were scuppered by the weather with the FA Chairman, Greg Clarke, also unable to attend because his flight to Switzerland was cancelled.

A 6-2 majority is required and England – the only home nation to qualify for Russia 2018 – Scotland and Northern Ireland are expected to side with Fifa, who also have four votes. It is understood Wales are the only voting faction to oppose the introduction of VAR, because of reservations they have about how it affects the flow of the game and concerns about its implementation in such a high profile environment as a World Cup.

Data from various VAR trials was collated by experts at the University of Leuven in Belgium and presented to the Ifab board in January but there have been several incidents of the technology causing controversy since then, not least in Tottenham’s 6-1 FA Cup win over Rochdale at Wembley this week.

The Ifab technical director and former Premier League referee, David Elleray, said 40 countries are using, having trials or are interested in VAR technology. “Football has to decide does it want to use in a system which will bring in greater accuracy and fairness, albeit with some delay occasionally,” he said.

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“Or do they want to stay where they are, where the fans are complaining that something is clearly wrong, everybody watching on television can see it was wrong, everybody in the stadium can see on their mobile phones that it was wrong, but the one person who needed to see the replay wasn’t allowed to look at the replay?”

Speaking to the BBC, he added: “People have to decide do they want greater fairness or do they want continued unfairness because they don’t want to occasional interruption?”

The Fifa president, Gianni Infantino, defended the time taken by the VAR to review decisions. “Let’s look at the facts,” he said. “We’ve analysed almost 1,000 games and the reality is you lose an average of 90 seconds per game.”

If Ifab votes to adopt VAR, Premier League clubs will vote on whether to follow suit soon but the top flight is understood to be divided on VAR.