News

Source - The Herald 26/01/12

The chief constable of Scotland's largest police force has called for more action to tackle pubs and nightclubs that serve alcohol to already drunk customers after a woman suffered a serious head injury following a marathon drinking session.

Strathclyde Police Chief Stephen House told an alcohol summit yesterday one of the main problems officers faced was dealing with incidents where customers had become inebriated in licensed premises.

He revealed officers were called to a "generally respectable pub" in Glasgow city centre at 2am on Sunday after a woman who had been drinking there since mid-afternoon on Saturday injured herself as she left.

Mr House wants licensing boards to do more to crack down on premises which encourage drunk customers to continue drinking.

"She's had so much to drink that she's unable to walk and has to be helped from the premises by doorstaff. She sits on the kerb, gets up, falls over and smashes her head on the concrete. She ended up with a bleed on the brain. She's okay, but she might not have been," Mr House told the Changing the Culture conference in Glasgow.

"How can she have got so paralytically drunk in the space between the door and the kerb? She didn't – she was drunk within the premises.

"Something needs to be done about serving people who are already drunk because they are a liability to themselves, to their health, and to the police."

Mr House said the rest of Scotland and the UK did "not see the same ravages of drink that you see in Glasgow and the west of Scotland", adding another factor causing problems for the police was a growing trend towards people drinking more at home or at house parties.

Of the 20 serious drink-related violent incidents last weekend, only one occurred in a pub while the remainder took place in the street or private homes. The number of domestic incidents involving drink which police were called to in the past year is up 11%, while callouts to noisy house parties have risen 13%.

Mr House said that, while he was unsure of the ability of minimum pricing legislation to tackle Scotland's booze culture, he believed it could make problem drinking easier to manage.

The Association of Chief Police Officers Scotland has backed the Scottish Government's planned legislation.

He said: "There will be people in the room who think it won't work and it might not – but I think we've got to try. If it doesn't work it must be abandoned.

"But what minimum pricing should do is level the playing field between licensed premises and off-licenses. At the moment people are stocking up and drinking at home.

"Behaviour is more easily controlled in pubs than if they are drinking at home, so anything that encourages people to come back into city centres or into their local pubs and clubs is something we would welcome.

"For us it's not about reducing consumption, it's about controlling the damage."

Dr Evelyn Gillan, chief executive of Alcohol Focus Scotland, said: "The price of alcohol is a significant factor in driving people to drinking at home.

"The majority of alcohol bought in Scotland is drunk at home and the move to greater drinking indoors should force a licensing rethink."

Councillor Stephen Dornan, convener of Glasgow Licensing Board, said they had received "no reports in relation to any establishment serving someone who's drunk".

He added: "It is already illegal to serve someone while they are drunk, and what should have happened is the police should have reported it to the licensing standards officer who would then have reported it to us. Then we could have taken action.

"The pub would probably have come back and said that she got drunk when the air hit her, but the fact is she was in there for about 14 hours."