Sudbury Joins Campaign To Cut Out Super-Strength Beer

5 July 2013, 06:12

Sudbury's set to become the latest town to stop selling super strength alcohol.

The extra strong beers and ciders have already been pulled from supermarket shelves in Ipswich and that's meant a big drop in street drinking and anti-social behaviour.

Two thirds of Ipswich's 122 stores have now signed up and figures reveal its had positive effects for the town.

In September 2012 when the campaign was launched, 53 stores were super strength free. To date, 80 are signed up, equating to two thirds, or 65% of the town’s total stores.  Support has also been gained from almost all national retailers with stores in the town, with the East of England Co-op, Tesco, Martin McColl, Debenhams, Marks and Spencer, BHS, Waitrose, Sainsburys and Aldi all signed up.

Figures also show a big reduction in the number of times members of the public have called the police to report incidents of concern involving the street drinking community. Ninety-four ‘street drinker events’ were reported to police in the six months from the launch of the campaign (September 2012-March 2013), compared with 191 events in the same period the year before.  That's a drop of 49.2%.

Now the police in Sudbury are hoping they can have similar results.  They've already begun speaking to off-licences and supermarkets and hope to start pulling the extra-strong beer and cider from shelves next month.