“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.
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“It’s more the people coming in from out of town. We hear of coaches that are actually dropping people off at 10 o’clock in the morning and they’re coming from other areas outside of Leeds. “It’s stag and hen events it seems that are introducing the problems.”
Ms Raper said the council was working with pubs on the crawl and that venues “accepted responsibility” for bad behaviour on their own premises. But she said the problems were occurring on the streets between boozers.
Labour councillor for Headingley and Hyde Park, Al Garthwaite, said older male groups aged between their mid-20s and 50s were causing the problems.
She told the committee: “A lot of our residents are saying ‘I never go into Headingley on a Saturday now, it’s not a friendly place to be’. This isn’t good for any business in the area.”
Councillor Garthwaite said there was a recurring problem of students running out into traffic, but she added: “Really the problem is these older all-male groups. Public urination, sexual harassment, general harassment and it’s intimidating to people. This is what we’re trying to deal with.”
The extension of the zone, which is called Leeds’ cumulative impact assessment, does not place an outright ban on the council granting new alcohol licences on the Otley Run. But it does make it much harder for a bar or pub to set up in the area, with new applicants having to demonstrate that they would not add to the anti-social behaviour at the very least.
Similar restrictions on new licences remain in place around the city centre, Hyde Park, Armley and Harehills and Burmantofts. The council has also created a new zone, which attempts to restrict new off-licences in Holbeck.
Ms Raper said: “In Holbeck, we’ve a dense residential area and we’re starting to see a growth in the number of off-licences in this area, resulting from which there are high levels of alcohol harms and anti-social behaviour associated with street drinking.” The committee was also told that the zone around Armley may be extended in the new year, following suggestions it should cover all of Town Street.
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