North East Lincolnshire plan to extend alcohol restrictions

Powers to allow police to confiscate alcohol from people drinking in public may be extended to all of North East Lincolnshire.

The council is considering bringing in a Controlled Drinking Zone for the whole borough, allowing police to seize alcohol from "anti-social" drinkers.

The six councillors behind the proposal claimed the current system "does not go far enough".

One local charity said the plan was not feasible.

Currently, the borough has two exclusion zones covering Grimsby town centre and Cleethorpes seafront.

One of the councillors behind the motion, Labour's Ian Lindley, claimed the problem of street drinking was "escalating" in other areas of the borough.

'Widen the net'

"The issue of anti-social behaviour linked to street drinking is spreading further than that", he said.

"I think we need to widen the net to cover all the areas.

"I think it is unfair just to target two areas when we've got areas like Freeman Street [in Grimsby] that are not covered by the exclusion zones and it's causing a bit of a nightmare for the traders."

Dave Carlile, from the Harbour Place Day centre for homeless people, which is on Freeman Street in Grimsby, said he understood why councillors wanted to bring in the extended ban but questioned its effectiveness.

"Could you enforce something like that is the first question?" he said.

"We don't have the police around at weekends, we don't have the police around during the day to enforce that.

"Why do we need to bring in new legislation? When people are under the influence of drinking or substances there are laws that can deal with that anyway."