IF the proposed new Cumulative Impact Policy prevents a single business opening anywhere in Swindon, it will be a disgrace.

As we report today, the police are inviting the council to consider restricting licensing in places where other licensed premises are thought to contribute to crime hotspots.

In other words the policy, if enacted as proposed, will lead to the unsavoury spectacle of applicants being penalised for the sins of others. Freedoms will be restricted not because of things that have happened but because of things which might happen.

It is important to point out that we in no way advocate any area suffering the unrestricted opening of licensed premises.

That is why we support existing planning regulations which allow permission to be declined if the applicant is unsuitable or the location already well-served.

Those regulations also forbid, for example, the opening of a nightclub in a residential cul-de-sac or opposite a school, and rightly so.

If certain existing licensed premises are associated with trouble, this is a cue for the police, local authority and courts to close those premises and see to it that troublemakers are heavily punished.

Preventing perfectly blameless people from opening businesses, and restricting the choice of perfectly blameless potential customers, is easier than tackling the real source of the trouble but that doesn’t make it the right thing to do.

If police forces are so starved of resources that they feel the need to advocate such policies, we have reached a very worrying stage indeed.