New Alcohol Profiles for England provide national map of alcohol-related harms

Confirmed - alcohol link with social deprivation

The Local Alcohol Profiles for England (LAPE 2010) have been released by the North West Public Health Observatory, based in the Centre for Public Health at Liverpool John Moores University.

The profiles contain 23 alcohol-related indicators for every local authority and 24 for every primary care trust in England. This time, key indicators in healthcare, criminal justice, benefits claimants, drinking patterns and life lost due to alcohol have been used in combination to identify and map those areas experiencing different overall levels of alcohol-related harms. The profiles confirm that poorer communities have substantially higher levels of alcohol-related ill health, anti-social behaviour and premature deaths than their wealthier neighbours, Although the data show that there are drink related problems across all communities, people living in England’s most deprived local authorities are more likely to suffer than those living in the more affluent ones.

Other key findings from the profiles:

Over the five years to 2008/09 there has been around a 65% increase in the number of people being admitted to hospital due to alcohol to 606,799 individuals - an increase of over 240,000 people.

There were 945,469 admissions to hospital for alcohol-related harm in England in 2008/09. This is 825 alcohol-related admissions a day more than five years ago.

However, these figures are based on the method of recording alcohol-related hospital admissions that is currently being reviewed because of the problem of failing to take account of changes in coding practices (see page 13 and Alcohol Alert Issue 1 2012)

Two thirds (65%) of all the local authorities suffering the highest levels of overall harms are in the North West and North East regions of England. The ten local authority areas with the highest levels of combined alcohol-related harm are, in descending order, Manchester, Salford, Liverpool, Rochdale, Tameside, Islington, Middlesbrough, Halton, Oldham and Blackpool.

By comparison, East of England and South East regions contain two thirds (65%) of all the local authorities with the lowest overall harm. The ten local authorities with the lowest levels of alcohol-related harm are, in ascending order, Broadland, East Dorset, South Northamptonshire, Babergh, Three Rivers, South Norfolk, Hart, Sevenoaks, Wokingham and North Kesteven.

Between 2006 and 2008 there were 11,247 deaths from chronic liver disease in men. The number of male deaths from chronic liver disease continues to rise steadily and increased by 12% for the five years up to 2008.

Across England, there were 415,059 recorded crimes attributable to alcohol in 2009/10; equivalent to 8.1 crimes per 1,000 population. The highest rates of alcohol-attributable crime occur in the London region where there were 12.2 crimes per 1,000 residents, although this has decreased by 2.1% from the previous year. The lowest rate is in the North East region at 6.2 crimes per 1,000 which also showed the largest decrease (13.5%) from the previous year.

Trends in alcohol-related harms vary between local authority areas. For instance, 64% saw an increase of over 5% in hospital admissions for alcohol-related harm in 2008/09, whilst only 7% showed a decrease of over 5%.

The 2010 Local Alcohol Profiles for each local authority and primary care trust in England are available from:
http://www.lape.org.uk.