Binge boozers face last orders to stop drunken disorder on medieval streets

By day it’s easy to see why York was recently named the place most Brits would like to live.

From the grandeur of the Minster to the quaint historic streets, someone once said wandering for a few hours there is to experience life as viewed through a buttered crumpet. Even the buskers are well-turned out.

However, stay too long on a Friday or Saturday evening and the mood changes. While the backdrop may be medieval, come the weekend, York has the same 21st-century problems as any other big town or city.

A magnet for hen and stag parties, the concentration of pubs and clubs in a relatively small area means after dark the city’s main shopping streets are littered not with street performers and foreign students trying to find their way to Clifford’s Tower, but flyers advertising two for one drink offers, large groups of staggering drunks and the odd badly dressed Wonder Woman who has lost the bride-to-be.

With drink comes the potential for trouble and the problem has not just been confined to the city centre’s main drinking routes. York is blessed with much open green space, but many of the parks have become a magnet for teenagers, too young to gain admittance to bars, but old enough to get their hands on cheap alcohol.

For a city looking to develop its night-time economy beyond the usual pub culture, minimising the impact of the binge drinkers and the resulting anti-social behaviour is key. It’s one of the reasons why York Council is pushing for a zero-tolerance zone to be introduced across the entire area which lies within its outer ring road.

If it goes ahead, and the proposal seems to have much support, York will be one of the first councils in the country to implement a city-wide crackdown under the Designated Public Place Order legislation, which crucially allows police to confiscate alcohol.

“At the moment we have 19 individual orders focusing on a number of streets in York and surrounding areas,” says Coun Sandy Fraser, cabinet member for crime and community safety.

“Part of the problem is displacement. At the moment, if officers are confronted with drinkers who are causing trouble in one of these zones they can ask them to stop, but they simply move across to the other side of the road and carry on.

“Of course, officers can arrest anyone they suspect of a public order offence or being drunk and disorderly wherever they are in the city, but DPPOs are an extra tool in their armoury. It’s about stopping situations before they escalate.

“Also because the zones are fragmented, officers, particularly new recruits are often unsure how far their power extends. With the applications for another 30 zones already lodged with the council it seemed sensible to look at whether this piecemeal approach was the right one.

“York isn’t unique – we have youngsters who before they can con their way into pubs spend their Friday and Saturday nights drinking in parks and we have had various complaints about alcohol related disturbances close to the city’s taxi ranks.

“A few years ago, the problem was largely associated along what was known as the Micklegate run, but more recently the age-group which used to frequent that area have moved to what we can probably best be described as the flashier bars in the heart of the city centre.”

Proposals for the city wide no-tolerance zone are due to go under consultation and those behind the plans insist its not a case of a hammer to crack a nut.

“It’s often mistakenly referred to an alcohol free zone, which does sound incredibly draconian,” adds Coun Fraser. “We have no intention of stopping people having a glass of wine with a picnic in Museum Gardens, but at the same time it’s no good to pretend that York is somehow immune from anti-social behaviour which springs from excessive drinking.”

Councils across Yorkshire will be playing close attention to what happens in York. According to NHS research, more than a third of adults across Yorkshire and the Humber drink more than the maximum recommended weekly alcohol units.

Drink related incidents cost the region’s NHS in excess of £1.7m a year, with just one glassing attack estimated to cost £184,000 and the time of around 40 medical staff.

While the problem exists all year round, it increases during the summer months when lighter evenings attract more people into town and city centres. Resorts like Scarborough have inevitably become hotspots for trouble, but under Operation Mandrill a DPPO has been put in place across the town centre until the end of August to allow police to target drunken troublemakers.

However, such moves may only be able to tackle what is the tip of an ever-growing ice berg. A rash of pubs and clubs have opened in recent years luring customers through their doors with the promise of two for one offers and free shots.

With disposable income limited, these establishments have become one of the unlikely success stories of the recession, but they have also created a clientele which regularly drinks to excess. While recent Government proposals to tackle the country’s binge drinking culture have been largely focused on supermarkets and the introduction of a minimum pricing system for alcohol, they also include plans for a late night levy which would see clubs and pubs pay for policing and to clean-up the streets the morning after the night before.

It is understood councils would be given the power to charge establishments, which open after midnight, a flat fee to deal with the fall-out from drinking. However, many in York believe there’s another more damaging loophole which needs to be closed.

“I have become increasingly aware of significant problems in the city’s local night time economy resulting from price wars between licensed premises offering reduced entrance charges and discounted alcohol prices,” says York City Council Leader James Alexander, who has written to Lord Henley, Minister of State for crime prevention asking him to look at the current legislation.

“Our experience in challenging such promotions is that venues in York are using a loophole in the regulations. They claim that they alcohol prices are not ‘promotional’, but are a policy of the venue. York is not alone in its struggle, but we need our powers to be strengthened so we can deal with the damaging effects it has on crime and disorder, public safety and the viability of local businesses.”

However, while more stringent regulation has been largely welcomed by medical profession, there is another more radical approach, which suggests we have overestimated the problem and if we stopped talking about binge drinking it would decline.

According to some reports, alcohol consumption has been falling in the UK over the past decade and last year for the first time last year, wine sales fell.

“Binge drinking figures in the UK have officially been dropping since the early 2000s, but the culture of a binge drinking minority that has become more extreme and more public, has fed the media’s infatuation with a boozed-up Britain,” says Jamie Bartlett, author of Under the Influence, a 2011 report on binge drinking for think tank Demos. “The only way to tackle this minority is with the active involvement of parents, without that policy to deal with binge-drinking will not have the reach or impact desired to combat the problem.”

TEENAGERS AND TOLL OF ALCOHOL

Research shows that by the time teenagers have reached the age of 15, eight out of 10 have tried alcohol.

Among 35 European countries, the UK has the third highest proportion of 15-year-olds who admitted being drunk 10 times or more in the previous years.

The amount young people are drinking is also on the rise with those 11 to 15-year-olds who admit to drinking regularly consuming close to 13 units a week.

A Home Office survey has also found that one in five 12 to 13-year-olds and 28 per cent of 14 to 15-year-olds caused damage while drinking and one in 10 15 to 16-year-olds said alcohol had caused them to get in trouble with the police.