Data extracted from the court proceedings database held by the Office for Criminal Justice Reform showing the number of defendants prosecuted for being under-age purchasers of alcohol from 1995 to 2005 in England and Wales is shown in the following table. Court proceedings data for 2006 will be available in the autumn of 2007.
As an alternative to court proceedings, the offence under section 149(1) of the Licensing Act 2003 of buying or attempting to buy alcohol by person under 18 can attract a Penalty Notice for Disorder (PND). The offence was added to the scheme in 2005 and there were 21 Penalty Notices issued that year. The provisional figure for 2006 shows that 70 Penalty Notices were issued during that year.
Offence Statute 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 Person under 18 buying or attempting to buy or consuming intoxicating liquor. Person under 18 buying or consuming intoxicating liquor in Licensed premises. Licensing (Occasional Permissions) Act 1983 Schedule (Sec 3) para 4(2). Licensing Act 1964 Sec 169(2) 25 33 31 39 38 24 21 16 29 21 21 1 These data are on the principal offence basis. 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account when those data are used. 3 The licensing (Occasional Permissions) Act 1983 and the Licensing Act 1964 were repealed by the Licensing Act 2003 which came into force on 24 November 2005. There were no prosecutions for the newly created offence under the 2003 Act of buying or attempting to buy alcohol by a person under 18 (Section 149(1)(a)) in 2005. The figure for 2005 in the above table represents the number of defendants proceeded against under the old statute ( Licensing (Occasional Permissions) Act 1983 Schedule (Sec 3) para 4(2). Licensing Act 1964 Sec 169(2)).