For decades, donning a fancy dress costume and trying to complete the Otley Run has been a rite of passage for students living in Leeds.
The pub crawl takes in some 15 pubs, depending on who you ask, beginning in Woodies Ale House, on Otley Road in Headingley, and ending a couple of miles south in the city centre – if participants make it that far, which they usually don’t.
For as long as the tradition has existed, locals have enjoyed seeing the mismatched Super Mario characters, groups of sexy lifeguards and the odd six-foot-three rugby player dressed as Marge Simpson.
But now anyone tackling the Otley Run may have to contend with more than a hangover afterwards – they might also be hit with a £1,000 fine. Leeds city council has said it will begin to clamp down on antisocial behaviour on the boozy run after escalating complaints from residents.
“It was a fun thing and a well-known characteristic of the area, and it didn’t cause too much trouble,” said Al Garthwaite, a local councillor for Headingley, Hyde Park and Woodhouse. “As a councillor, I didn’t have any complaints about it.”
But since the pandemic, the number of boozy, costume-clad groups has exploded and a different – and more troublesome – demographic has joined in, causing constant and sometimes serious problems for those who live and work in Headingley. Garthwaite said: “The groups seem to be bigger and we’re finding that it’s men-only groups, grown men from their late-20s even into their 50s.”
She said these groups, many of which are stag parties, have started to come from all over the UK on organised trips. British Transport Police have reported more people coming off the train drunk at an earlier hour, she added.
“They basically create a trail of destruction. These men are probably Mr Nice Guy at home, they’ve probably got families, jobs, but they turn into Mr Nasty Guy when they’re all together, out to get drunk.”
Olympia Agorini, front-of-house manager at the Box, one of the livelier bars in Headingley, said in her four years there she had noticed a difference. “Saturdays have always been busy but now the clientele is difficult. There are a lot of middle-aged men from London, and they don’t behave. They don’t care about being barred because they’re going back to London. They have no affiliation with Headingley and no respect for the area. It shouldn’t be happening.”
Problems reported to the council and police include littering, broken glass, vomiting, public urination and more serious crimes like harassment of retail and bar staff, sexual harassment of pedestrians and flashing, including around children.
Garthwaite, who is the lead councillor for ending violence against women and girls, said she had also had reports of numerous similar incidents, and had held meetings with local residents and Leeds North West MP Alex Sobel to discuss the antisocial behaviour. “Quite a lot of young women have told me that they don’t go into Headingley on a Saturday especially, so they’re not going to the shops, they’re not going to where they live.”
One student reported being so badly harassed by a group of males that she ran into traffic to get away from them, while an elderly woman said the men clogging the streets meant she no longer went to mass in the cathedral on Saturday evenings.
Pubs are now turning away the most inebriated groups. The Original Oak, one of the bigger pubs on the route, turned away 98 people last Saturday and they have been given a radio to alert others further down the route of the worst offenders.
Garthwaite said nobody is trying to cancel the Otley Run but more needs to be done to protect residents. “The police have applied for funding so that they can increase patrols. Police do patrol but their numbers have been severely cut, and if they’re called away to an emergency, they’re not there to stop things from happening,” she said.
A council clampdown would be possible because the area is covered by a public spaces protection order. While it was not previously enforced, the council and police do have the power to issue fines of up to £1,000 to anyone causing a public nuisance. Councillors are also looking at a common code of conduct for all the bars to empower other customers to report bad behaviour.
