Gus Jaspert
Deputy Director, Head of Drugs and Alcohol
4th Floor Fry Building, 2 Marsham Street, London, SW1P 4DF
E-mail: [email protected] www.homeoffice.gov.uk
8 August 2012
UPDATE ON THE GOVERNMENT’S ALCOHOL STRATEGY
As you are aware, the Government published its Alcohol Strategy in March, setting out a range of
action to tackle the harms associated with excessive drinking. We have already made significant
progress on delivering the key commitments within the Strategy and are grateful for your support to
date on this.
In particular, I am keen to highlight that the majority of alcohol measures within the Police Reform and
Social Responsibility Act 2011 were introduced on 25 April. This included doubling the fine for
persistent underage sales to £20,000, lowering the evidential threshold on licensing authorities and
removing the vicinity test for licensing representations to allow wider local community involvement in
licensing decisions and reforming the system of temporary event notices. In addition we intend, from
31st October, that licensing authorities will be able to make use of new powers in the form of the late
night levy to help cover the cost of policing the late night economy and more flexible early morning
alcohol restriction orders. The Government will issue revised statutory guidance to licensing
authorities and separate guidance on the levy to coincide with these legislative changes in October, as
well as the changes to the Licensing Act 2003 that the Government expects to bring in to force as a
result of the Live Music Act 2012. The Government is also working with industry to help foster a culture
of more responsible drinking. We are already seeing a greater choice of lower strength alcohol
products and reductions in the strength of existing products as over 30 major alcohol companies, who
have committed to removing a billion units from the market by 2015, put their plans into action. Over
60% of cans and bottles in shops are already displaying clear labelling on units, NHS guidelines and
the pregnancy messages as more than 90 alcohol companies put their plans into action to make sure
that over 80% of labels have this information by the end of next year.
However, there is still much to do. The Government committed to consult in a number of areas in the
Strategy. These include the level at which a minimum unit price for alcohol should be set, the
introduction of a ban on multi-buy promotions in the off-trade, and the introduction of a new healthrelated objective for alcohol licensing related specifically to cumulative impact. The Strategy also sets
out that we will consult on whether the Mandatory Code for Alcohol sufficiently targets problems such
as irresponsible promotions in pubs and clubs, and whether the code should be applied to all sectors,
where relevant. Finally, as the Strategy makes clear we are committed to removing unnecessary
regulation and to exploring how it can make the day-to-day process of licensing as easy as possible for
responsible businesses and intend seek views on a number of proposals to cut red tape in the
licensing system. The Home Office, working closely with the Department of Health and other
Government Departments, is leading work in these areas and I am writing to inform you of our intention
to publish a single public consultation on these key proposals soon after the start of parliamentary
WORKING TOGETHER TO PROTECT THE PUBLIC
business in the autumn.
We are keen to ensure that the consultation gathers as many points of view as possible and therefore
want to give you, our partners, as much notice as possible that we will be inviting you to respond. I
would like to encourage all those with an interest to participate in this forthcoming consultation and so
contribute to the development of these proposals. We will be supporting the public consultation with a
number of technical working groups with more information to follow on this over the coming weeks.
Please pass this letter on to anyone else that may have an interest.
Yours sincerely,
Gus Jaspert
Deputy Director, Head of Drugs and Alcohol
WORKING TOGETHER TO PROTECT THE PUBLIC