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Pubs, clubs, restaurants, shops and other businesses that sell alcohol have a legal responsibility not to sell or attempt to sell alcohol to a person who is drunk, and to respond appropriately to individuals who are intoxicated.
The Licensing Act 2003, sets out these four licensing objectives:
Correctly dealing with drunkenness at your premises can help promote all four of these objectives.
Drinks promotions must be socially responsible and not encourage excessive drinking. Preventing irresponsible dinks promotions will always be specified in the licence’s mandatory conditions.
Licensing authorities are likely to take issue with special offers that are limited to a short period of time within a single day (e.g. cheaper drinks before 11:00PM), as they may encourage larger quantities of alcohol to be purchased and drunk within a short timeframe. It is also against Government guidance to offer activities that provide rewards or prizes for drinking alcohol.
The Government also advises against promotional marketing that glamorises or encourages intoxication or drunken behaviour. If your social media pages contain photos of people wearing traffic cones for hats, throwing items, or otherwise causing unrest, the authorities may consider this promotion of drunken behaviour and a breach of your licence conditions.
Staff should be trained to recognise the signs of someone beginning to become drunk and be able to confidently refuse sales when someone has had enough. If in doubt, refusal is always safer. The only time refusal might result in a problem would be if it was solely based on a customers protected characteristic (race, sex, disability, gender, sexual orientation, religion or belief).
It is also necessary to ask customers to not buy any further drinks for another person who is becoming drunk.
Drink Aware posters can be displayed in the premises to remind customers of the unit content in alcoholic drinks and the safe alcohol consumption limit.
Providing alcohol in smaller servings can help control the amount your patrons drink. The law also requires on-licences to sell drinks in particular unit measurements.
Download our small measures notice to display this information to your customers.
All licensed premises that sell alcohol must provide free drinking water under the Licensing Act 2003. Drinking water helps to space out drinks and dilute the concentration of alcohol to prevent drunkenness. It can also ease or prevent hangovers, but it will not sober up an already-drunk person.
Drunkenness increases the likelihood of fights, aggressive behaviour, vandalism, health emergencies, or drink driving. In fulfilling the Licensing Act objectives, licensed premises operators should take all available measures to prevent this from occurring by intervening before someone has drunk too much.
The first step is to prevent any further alcohol from being purchased by refusing sales. It is an offence to sell alcohol to a person that is already drunk. You can also refuse entry to the premises to a drunk person, with door staff able to assist should they be employed.
Download our refusal of alcohol sales log sheet template.
Staff should be trained on their responsibilities under the Licensing Act 2003 and be able to recognise appropriate cut off points for serving drunk customers.
Drunk customers may not always be receptive to being refused, but you should not allow the conversation to escalate into an argument or confrontation. Abuse of staff should be treated with zero tolerance.
If someone’s drunken behaviour has become unacceptable, you should ask them to leave. If they will not leave voluntarily, security staff can remove them. If you do not employ security staff then you should call the police for assistance. Members of staff cannot physically eject customers unless they are SIA trained.
Do not let a drunk person drive home. It may be useful to call a taxi, particularly if you are concerned for their safety. However, taxi drivers may refuse to take someone who is drunk.
Some larger premises, especially nightclubs, assign marshals to the task of patrolling to watch for drunken behaviour, and to intervene where it is occurring. This may involve the use of SIA registered door staff where necessary.
Implementing a policy to include arrangements for dealing with intoxicated customers can be helpful. The policy should clearly express that every effort will be made by staff to prevent patrons from deteriorating to an uncontrolled intoxicated extent. All staff must be briefed on the policy.
An official company policy on drunkenness and intoxication helps to establish house rules and makes it easier to explain to customers when refusing sales.
The policy can include:
Contact Us
For advice or assistance with writing a drunkenness policy, or responding to the investigation of an incident, contact our Licensing team on 01332 226 151 or fill in the form below.
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