Teachers won’t have to leave the grounds of their £18,000-a-year private school to enjoy a tipple, a council has decided.
St Helen’s School, an independent girl’s secondary school in Northwood, was given permission to sell booze on Friday afternoons at a licensing meeting on Thursday last week (July 29).
The school asked Hillingdon Councilto let them sell alcohol from 4pm to 8pm to help “bring staff together”, but one neighbour’s group was “fundamentally opposed”.
Sally Corless, for Carew Lodge Residents’ Association, wrote that the 75 schoolteachers and their partners could behave badly after boozing.
Ms Corless said: “There is every chance that the teachers and their guests will get drunk and disorderly in the time that they have to drink.
“It is curious to me as to why this is an important initiative for the school and teachers? I have never worked in an environment that has had a ‘bar’ on site. This is not normal.
“If the teachers need to drink at 4pm in the afternoon, they can go to the pub.”
Fees at St Helen’s are £14,532-a-year for prep school students and increase to £18,321-a-year at senior school.
The school boasts a floodlit astro-turf, six-lane swimming pool, dome-covered netball courts in winter months, a fitness studio, a dance studio and a four-badminton-court sports hall.
But the school’s business manager Jackie Brinicombe said management wanted to “bring staff together” and “discuss things we couldn’t discuss in a pub”.
She said: “Staff that do drink would drink within sensible proportions, the suggestion that they would be drunk and disorderly would be unlikely.
“Merchant Taylors, the boy’s school which is close to us, they have a social club which is working extremely well, it’s run very professionally and is well managed.
“I’ve spent most of my career in the NHS and every hospital I’ve worked in had a social club to offer the opportunity to work in a private and closed, safe environment.”
Guests would only be staff and partners, or one close friend, and all students would be off the premises by the time the bar is open, Ms Brinicombe explained.
After a short period of deliberation, Councillor Alan Chapman granted the school’s application for a license to sell alcohol between 4pm and 8pm – during term time only.
The school will also be required to display a notice asking bar-goers to be respectful and leave quietly.
If you are affected by this licensing decision, contact [email protected]
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