Licensing record

But, amazingly, the students don’t drink enough to make all these bars viable. Being here only half the year, to maximise educational consumption the bars have to remain open until 4am — even on Christmas Day. The recent approvals of several Cowley Road licence extension applications are straightforward contraventions of the city council licensing committee’s own Special Saturation Licensing Policy (SSP).

This seeks to control alcohol-related disorder and antisocial behaviour by ‘restricting the expansion of licensed premises in East Oxford and the city centre so as not to add to the existing impact in the surrounding streets’.

The council’s failure to link policy with action has cropped up with regard to an application by Milano’ (‘the ultimate student bar on Cowley Road’, seeking to serve drinks in glasses — currently banned on police advice, as well as staying open until 4am. When the students are not here, bar prices drop even further, attracting a different breed of inconsiderate outsider. But I doubt if the owners of these premises look at the implications of the heavy drinking they promote — otherwise why seek the expense of such long opening hours? As the recent C4 program Undercover Boss showed, owners do not attend their clubs at throwing out/up time. But if the council won’t impose its own policy, why should they care?

Hugh McManners , Oxford