Government bins plans to give councils blanket banning powers

Just two weeks after Gordon Brown promised to provide new anti-bingeing powers to local councils, Alan Johnson confirmed that he is ditching the proposed blanket banning orders.

In his speech to the Labour Party conference Mr Brown said that the Government “will give local authorities the power to ban 24-hour drinking throughout a community”. However, this week Alan Johnson confirmed that the government had agreed with the drinks industry to ditch the so-called blanket banning orders.

Other proposed local council powers set to be dropped from the Policing and Crime Bill currently going through Parliament include the right to outlaw happy-hours, ban glass containers at peak hours and insist that only over-21s are served in particular premises. A spokesman for Mr Johnson, the Home Secretary, denied that he had watered down Mr Brown’s much-vaunted crackdown on binge-drinking. He said that in place of the abandoned discretionary powers, councillors would be given the ability to initiate licensing reviews.

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