ADZs: trade chiefs meet with Home Office as delays continue

The Home Office has been forced into an embarrassing climbdown on its claim that alcohol disorder zones (ADZs) would become law by the end of January.

And a Lords committee has slammed the regulations surrounding the pay-for-policing measure, which was first proposed at the height of the storm surrounding so-called 24-hour licensing in 2005.

Pub trade chiefs are today meeting with Home Office representatives to thrash out their continuing concerns over the policy, which would see pubs in designated trouble areas forced to pay a fee to cover the cost of policing them.

The damning report from the Select Committee on Merits of Statutory Instruments will undoubtedly be discussed at the meeting.

It lays into the measures, questioning how many councils would adopt an ADZ, given the "complexity of the policy", and slamming them as "bureaucratic" and "unnecessary".

The criticisms come as further delays over the regulations mount up. It is now unlikely the regulations will be debated in Parliament until the end of February, or even early March.

As a result, the Home Office has been forced to backtrack on its previous assurance that ADZs would be in place by January.

The committee report summarises: "Much of the practical detail [about ADZs] is in the draft guidance, which was not published with the instrument, which we regard as poor practice.

"The Committee was left with an impression of a rather bureaucratic system and without a clear idea of how ADZs fit in with the other items in the local authorities¹ toolkit for combating alcohol-fuelled disorder.² However, a Home Office spokeswoman reiterated that ADZs were a "last resort".