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When Polish photographer Maciej Dakowicz travelled to Britain six years ago, he was surprised by what he called the country's 'vibrant' nightlife.

'I had never seen such scenes in Poland or any other country I had visited before,' commented the bemused Pole in a newspaper interview. The photographer ultimately settled in Cardiff and, after four years, produced 'Cardiff At Night', a portfolio of images documenting Saturday nights in the city's centre.

While the collection of images revealed the playful side to Cardiff's many stag and hen events, it also showcased the rather more unsavoury side effects of binge drinking: the bloody fights, drinkers passed out surrounded by take-away wrappers and revellers crawling along littered pavements.

Sadly, it is widely documented that Brits both at home and abroad are carving out a dubious reputation for booze-fuelled misadventure. Excessive drinking has become an expensive business. The Department of Health has estimated that alcohol misuse annually costs the health service around £2.7 billion.

In a bid to lessen the burden on the NHS and society at large, the government is keen to tackle the ills associated with drinking. The 2003 Licensing Act is a key part of this effort. The law comes into force in full this month and requires local licensing authorities to regulate the sale of and supply of alcohol, entertainment and late night food and drink vendors.

Curb the nuisance

The new rules also stipulate that councils find ways to curb public nuisance and crime and disorder. This has spawned a variety of council initiatives to contain the problem including working much more closely with licensees to ensure more stringent application of the licensing laws.

While most people agree that binge drinking is undesirable, implementing radical changes at a local level is not always straightforward. Oldham Council recently featured on Panorama, which looked into its radical measures to tackle the problem of binge drinking that were introduced after a mass brawl in one of the city's bars in which three people were stabbed.

'It was an issue that needed tackling and we are still working with licensees to address it,' explains Oldham cabinet member for the environment and infrastructure and Liberal Democrat councillor Mark Alcock.

The council is the first to implement controversial 'post office' style queues in bars to slow down the rate at which drinkers can order and consume drinks.

'A lot of people say the Licensing Act doesn't work but we are taking it further than any other council,' Alcock says. 'Some people think we have been too restrictive but most residents and licensees are embracing the changes.'

Carl Marsden, communications officer at Oldham Council, thinks the changes work in favour of licensees. 'It had got to a situation where one offered a deal on drinks and the rest undercut so it really wasn't doing any of them any good,' he says. Earlier this year, an Oldham-based nightclub hit the national headlines for offering £5.99 'all you can drink' nights.

Marsden notes that while the measures now receive a favourable reception from many stakeholders, that was not always the case. Some media reports initially branded the proposed restrictions indicative of a 'nanny state', he says, 'while some pub industry trade titles felt the measures constituted a sledgehammer to crack a nut'.

Garnering publicity

The council announced the far-reaching changes to the local press in May and received some negative reaction from trade associations in a subsequent article in the Daily Mail. But Alcock says that, following the publicity surrounding the Panorama documentary, other authorities have been getting in touch to learn more about what Oldham is doing. 'Councils in Burnley, Bury and Portsmouth are all coming up to see how we operate and they are thinking of doing the same,' he says.

Both Marsden and Alcock believe councils must go above and beyond a 'one size fits all' approach when addressing the problem of excessive drinking: a sentiment that was echoed by the Local Better Regulation Office (LBRO) in a report published in April. The report, Protecting Young People From Alcohol Related Harm, brought together the myriad approaches used by councils in an attempt to clamp down on drunken behaviour.

A key bearing on the success of each project is the extent of the community engagement and communication, says Erica Butler, senior policy analyst at the LBRO. 'We definitely see in some of our case studies that how successful the programme is correlates with how well the success is communicated to the local community.

'If the positive effects of the work done by the council are not communicated to residents then the council will probably have a difficult time convincing residents that their efforts are worthwhile.' The Home Office, which now provides funding to councils to communicate their efforts to the local community, appears to accept this fact.

Youthful solution

One of the first major challenges for local authorities remains the need to address the large numbers of underage drinkers. The LBRO report highlights the increasing lengths that under 18s will go to in the quest for alcohol. From caking themselves in make up to wielding fake IDs and even sending older family members to purchase alcohol on their behalf.

Above national average health issues linked to alcohol consumption in more than half its districts prompted Lancashire Council to employ a multi-agency approach to combat the problem. It looked to educate retailers and worked with more than 2,000 young people to alert them to its alcohol awareness campaigns.  'Lancashire is a good example of where there was a lot of effort made in terms of communications and public consultation,' Butler explains. 'And this helped make the project a success.'

'We ran several operations in conjunction with the police and licensees to try and improve the situation,' says Mike Warren, press officer at Lancashire Council. The council ran Operation Summer Nights in a bid to get underage drinkers off the streets during the summer, when it is a particular problem, and Operation Stay Safe where underage drinkers are picked up and taken off the streets. It also asked local retailers to be more vigilant when serving alcohol and to drastically reduce the number of sales to underage drinkers.

'We have been involved in a substantial amount of communication surrounding licenses in conjunction with trading standards. With our 'Age Check' campaign we worked especially hard to focus on smaller traders who were more disposed to serve under 18s,' says Warren.

The council also publicised its 'Age Check' initiative with visits, posters and DVDs aimed at smaller retailers, especially where English was not the first language of the licensees. 'Smaller family-run retailers required more education, we had to make sure the whole family was aware of the law,' Warren adds.

Seaside shenanigans

Famed for its pub-packed nightlife, Brighton & Hove also made similar moves. Julie Harris, press officer at Brighton & Hove Council, notes that limiting the undesirable consequences associated with alcohol is still high up the council's priority list.

'The concerns from residents are mainly about noise so our communications has been about explaining about all of that primarily with the local press,' she says. 'Our work fighting alcohol abuse has been ongoing since the new licensing laws started to come in. We've done a lot of work to tell people why we put extra conditions on licensing such as increasing penalties for selling drink to underage drinkers.'

The council worked hard on communicating its tougher licensing policy to retailers.

Its environmental health team undertook direct communication between officers and retailers and, again, they worked closely with retailers whose first language was not English.

'It is definitely moving in the right direction but still got a way to go and we've just launched another community safety campaign called Alcohol Harm. Alongside the new licensing laws, we introduced a cumulative impact area - an area in the city centre where there is a high concentration of licensed premises and the idea is to implement extra monitoring and extra conditions and to make sure that area doesn't get overloaded with licensed premises,' says Harris.

The council hit the headlines for its tightened rules on drinking on Brighton beach. 'We created areas where you are not allowed to drink out of cans and police have powers to confiscate cans and move drinkers on. We started the initiative in St James's Street but licensed traders thought we were being too heavy-handed,' she adds. 'I think one of the drinks retailers had a bone to pick about this and highlighted it to the national media.'

Brighton's experience with the occasional unhelpful retailer is a problem shared by all local councils. While their efforts to reduce anti-social behaviour may be laudable, they are also bound to have a negative effect on trade. It is this fact that makes ongoing engagement and clear communication particularly important to the process.

All eyes will be on Oldham now to see how successful its ambitious strategy for tackling binge drinking will be. While the council's communications team might want to position the clampdowns on licensees as a positive development for all concerned, there will undoubtedly be negative implications for retailers' earnings.

Yet despite the threat to pubs, clubs and retailers, the moral case for broaching the issue of binge drinking has rarely been stronger. The increase in deaths from alcoholism and the number of alcohol-related attacks reminds all of us there is sometimes a thin line between high jinks and something a great deal more serious. 

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