Dover gets new Community Alcohol Partnership scheme

The town of Dover is to become the latest area set to benefit from a Community Alcohol Partnership (CAP). 

The official launch took place on 29 March at Impact Fest in Pencester Gardens, Dover.

‍CAPs are partnerships between the police, local authorities, schools and retailers who work together to highlight the risks of underage drinking and improve the health and wellbeing of children and young people.

The Dover CAP will work to educate young people about underage drinking and help them make better decisions about issues such as alcohol, drugs and anti-social behaviour.

Working with local retailers, the CAP also aims to prevent underage sales and ‘proxy’ sales, where adults buy alcohol for under-18s.

Speaking exclusively to Convenience Store, CAP director, Kate Winstanley (left), said: ”We set up local partnerships to prevent underage drinking and we’ve now set up over 290. We call them CAPs across the UK and any retailers within a CAP area will get the offer of online training support.

”One of the great things that CAPs do is to foster and build really strong relationships between all the retailers and what you could call the enforcement community. It brings everybody together, so they’re all working to the same common objective of reducing underage drinking. And I think those positive relationships have been really helpful to many of the retailers in feeling supported, not isolated.”

“If there are groups of kids hanging around there might be problems of theft and violence against shop staff…”

Kate says the knock-on effects of underage drinking can also be addressed via CAPs. ”If there are groups of kids hanging around there might be problems of theft and violence against shop staff. CAPs can really help with all of that because you know it makes sure this is a partnership that everybody’s in together. We get a lot of feedback saying the CAP really made stores feel more supported.”

The CAP service is also acutely aware of the link between crime and underage drinking. ”Crime and underage sales are of course linked - even just the theft of alcohol,” adds Winstanley. “But for all our partners, the good thing about CAPs is that it’s real world/real time problems. So what’s happening in one CAP, you can absolutely guarantee is happening across the whole network. And if a store has been helped with a problem, we can share that learning.”

If any store is considering jopining up to a CAP, Winstanley says they only need to get in touch via the website. “We’re very, very happy to hear from anybody - retailers, police, whoever - if there’s evidence there’s an underage drinking problem. We’d be really happy to investigate further because we always act on evidence.”

For more information, click here.