New PSA for reducing alcohol-related harm

Policy documents aren't a favourite of mine, but this one is alcohol-related and touches on licensing so here goes.

Alcohol Policy UK have flagged up the new Public Service Agreement aimed at reducing alcohol-related harm in the spending period 2008-2011. To gauge whether this is being achieved the govt will measure:

1. The percentage change in the number of drug users recorded as being in effective treatment;
2. The rate of hospital admissions per 100,000 for alcohol-related harm;
3. The rate of drug related offending;
4. The percentage of the public who perceive drug use or dealing to be a problem in their area; and
5. The percentage of the public who perceive drunk or rowdy behaviour to be a problem in their area.

Whether the targets are realistic, achievable and so on I really don't know. The reason I raise this is because the 'delivery strategy' (ugh, please) for achieving the above goals has three strands, one of which states that:

the laws and licensing powers introduced to tackle alcohol-fuelled crime and disorder, protect young people and bear down on irresponsibly managed premises need to be used widely and effectively

Which seems to suggest the belief that licensing powers are not currently being used widely and effcetively enough, perhaps meaning there will be an increase in Licensing Authority enforcement budgets.

What occurs to me is that this might be a rather clever subsidy for Licensing Authorities, some of which are feeling hard-pushed under their current budgets. Despite this, there's currently a review of licensing fees going on and the general feeling is that (and my sources are purely anecdotal) fees can't rise very much, if at all. In this situation I'm sure an allocation for licensing enforcement from elsewhere would be most welcome.

Here are some links to the PDF of the PSA and a PDF overview from Ranzetta Consulting (the people behind the Alcohol Policy UK blog).

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