St Benet’s Hall, Oxford, looks set to close, writes Serenhedd James

The optimism with which I wrote about the future of St Benet’s Hall, Oxford, in the February edition of the Catholic Herald was clearly misplaced. The Master, Professor Richard Cooper, has now written to students to say that the University Council decided on 9th May that “the University cannot be confident that the Hall can support a full cohort of students for the full duration of their studies for the next academic year.” 

The University has therefore “decided not to grant a long-term Licence to St Benet’s Hall to continue to operate as a Permanent Private Hall (PPH) when the current licence ends”. That licence is everything, for the little religious institutions—three Catholic, two Anglican, one Baptist—that exist as satellites around the University as PPHs are reliant on the University Council for their survival. It is a clinically cold status quo: the University can withdraw from the arrangement at any time if it is not satisfied about a PPH’s long term viability.