Oxford City Council has made the decision to remove its existing policy whilst Cambridge City Council has made changes to its Cumulative Impact Policy which extend impact areas across the city.

Oxford City Council

Oxford City Council has made the decision to remove its existing Cumulative Impact Policy as part of its recent Statement of Licensing Policy Review, albeit potentially for an interim period only.  

This decision follows on from other councils that have also recently removed their Cumulative Impact Areas. In a report to the Licensing Committee, the ongoing pandemic and the significant disruption to the night time economy was acknowledged, and that the Council’s review of the Statement of Licensing Policy and the Special Saturation Policy (Cumulative Impact Assessment) had been disrupted by the Covid 19 pandemic.

As a result of this Oxford have taken a pragmatic approach and re-adopted the current Statement of Licensing Policy but have removed the Cumulative Impact Policy as no realistic assessment of cumulative impact has been possible.  Therefore the Central Oxford Special Saturation Policy Area and East Oxford Special Saturation Policy Area previously in place have now been removed and this is now in effect.

Cambridge City Council

Full Council approval of an updated Statement of Licensing Policy and Cumulative Impact Assessment, Cambridge City Council has made changes to its Cumulative Impact Policy which extend impact areas across the city. These changes are now in effect.

As stated in the Council’s Cumulative Impact Assessment, the effect of this policy “is to create a presumption that applications for the grant of a premises licence or club premises certificate or variations to existing licenses or certificates, within the cumulative impact area, will be refused if relevant representations are received.”