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8. An examination of trends in alcohol testing including the impact of door staff on age checking in on-sales outlets. 8.1 Controlling the use of alcohol presents the government, local authorities, the police, retailers and the public with a complex task, yet within that complexity there is a general consensus that young peoples’ access to alcohol needs to be regulated. The principle manner in which this is applied is to restrict uncontrolled access to alcohol. 8.2 Historically, the policing of age-related sales is one which lacks a coherent and consistent approach from the retailers and by an absence of any coordinated form of checking by regulatory bodies. It is fair to say that the sale of alcohol and other products to under-age consumers was a fairly common place occurrence until relatively recently. 8.3 Due to mounting concern over the negative effects of alcohol use in both individual and social terms, the last decade has seen an awareness of the need for increased vigilance from retail staff regarding alcohol sales to Under 18s. As a result we have seen an increase in age-checking for products and an accompanying rise in independent testing aimed at ensuring staff are adhering to the regulations and processes regarding age-checking. 8.4 Serve legal are one of the leading providers of this and, by using their data, it is possible to make comment about the developing trends in a range of outlets. These results can be divided into three main categories: frequency; type of outlet; variations and their possible causes 8.5 Frequency As noted, increased vigilance at the point of sale has led to a decrease in the number of under-age consumers attempting to buy alcohol at retail outlets. This pattern took root around the time age-checking became embedded within the industry. Examining Serve Legal data from 2007 to 2010 we can see that there has been a steady increase in pass rates11 from 55% in 2007 to 71% in 2010. However, whilst this reflects the average figure it is important to note that some retailers have pass rates above 80% and that some are aiming for 100% pass rates.
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A Serve Legal test purchase is a pass if the visitor is required to provided official ID to complete the purchase (either at the door or till/counter)