“Respectful” students are generally not the drinkers causing havoc on Leeds’ famous Otley Run pub crawl, the city council has said. The crawl, which stretches across around 15 pubs from the northern end of Headingley into the city centre, has traditionally been attempted by uni students in fancy dress for decades.
But the Run has come under heavy criticism from local councillors in recent months, with incidents of public urination and sexual harassment of young women said to be on the rise and reports of “coach loads” of older drinkers being bussed in. Now, Leeds City Council has extended a zone designed to limit new drinking establishments to the start of the Otley Run, in response to the problems.
A licensing committee meeting on Tuesday, where the extension was confirmed, was told that the demographic of drinkers doing the crawl had shifted towards older groups. Nicola Raper, from the authority’s entertainment licensing team, said: “I wouldn’t say this for definite, but I don’t think the students are the problem. They’re a bit more respectful of the area.
