Incidents of drink driving are not recorded centrally as the summary offences of ‘driving etc. after consuming alcohol or taking drugs’ do not form part of the recorded crime series.
Available information on the number of convictions at all courts and those dealt with by written warning, taken from the annual Home Office publication “Offences relating to motor vehicles, England and Wales Supplementary tables”, for the Metropolitan and City of London police force areas, from 1997 to 2004 (latest available) are given in the table.
Data are not available at London borough level. 2005 data will be available later this year.
Number of offences Police force area/police action 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 Metropolitan police total findings of guilt at all courts 16,165 13,889 12,414 11,801 11,260 12,905 12,621 13,227 Written warnings 18 39 17 7 6 0 5 0 Total 16,183 13,928 12,431 11,808 11,266 12,905 12,626 13,227 City of London total findings of guilt at all courts 436 301 236 162 162 221 230 169 Written warnings 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 Total 436 301 236 162 162 221 230 169 1 Offences under the Road Traffic Act 1988. Notes: 1. It is known that for some police force areas, the reporting of court proceedings in particular those relating to summary motoring offences, may be less than complete. Work is under way to ensure that the magistrates courts case management system currently being implemented by the Department for Constitutional Affairs reports all motoring offences to the Office for Criminal Justice Reform. This will enable more complete figures to be disseminated. 2. Every effort is made to ensure that the figures presented are accurate and complete. However, it is important to note that these data have been extracted from large administrative data systems generated by the courts and police forces. As a consequence, care should be taken to ensure data collection processes and their inevitable limitations are taken into account when these data are used.