Street drinking to be outlawed throughout borough

STREET drinking is to be banned throughout Camden under radical new plans being hammered out at the Town Hall.
Tough tactics to squeeze out nuisance drinkers will see the entire borough being turned into a Controlled Drinking Zone (CDZ).
Police will gain discretionary powers to confiscate alcohol and pour booze down the drain.
Drinkers who refuse to hand over their beer could face arrest and a night in the cells.
A pilot scheme has so far been restricted to Camden Town and thin strips of Kentish Town but the new measures will affect every single street in the borough.
In another important change, the new zone will not be solely targeted against street drinkers with entrenched addictions but also used to curb the behaviour of rowdy leisure time drunks.
Details of how the scheme will work in practical terms have yet to be finalised and discussions are continuing over how the ban could be enforced. Council officials will study how similar measures have worked in neighbouring Westminster.
The project is likely to get the go-ahead in January after senior Labour councillors this week ordered work to begin on drawing up a borough-wide ban.
Camden’s community safety chief Councillor Jake Sumner told a cabinet meeting on Tuesday: “People who drink on the streets can end up harassing and intimidating the vast majority of law-abiding residents, workers and visitors to Camden. After looking at all the options, we’re interested in looking more closely at a borough-wide controlled drinking zon (CDZ) that would tackle street drinking across the borough. I would be interested in seeing it used wider than the long-term street drinkers to include anyone who causes problems for others by drinking on the streets.”
Deputy leader Councillor Theo Blackwell said he would like the new zone to be renamed ‘Anti-Social Drinking Zone’.
He added: “We need to look at the different intensity of drinking in different parts of the borough.”
Cllr Blackwell said claims that the initial pilot scheme had failed in Camden Town because street drinkers were still visible on a daily basis were unfair.
He said that statistics showed more alcoholics were accessing help to beat their chronic booze dependency.
The new strategy has hardly been challenged by opposition politicians at the Town Hall although Conservative councillor Mike Greene remains annoyed that South End Green in Hampstead was missed out from the initial pilot scheme.
Traders and residents in the area have been campaigning for two years for protection from street boozers and Cllr Greene told Tuesday’s meeting that a “single digit” of regular drinkers could have been stopped in their tracks if a CDZ had been set up in the north of the borough.
He said later: “The problem could have been sorted out in a click of a finger. My worry now is that although it is good idea to have a borough-wide ban, the hotspot of South End Green will not get the attention it needs. I’m worried that by going for a boroughwide ban, it will take longer to implement and South End Green won’t have any measures actually in place next summer when the problem gets worse.”
In one startling case two years ago, a street drinker in South End Green died after slipping over in nearby public toilets.