Spiking – Government publish advice and support information

Following the announcements of the Government’s commitment to tackle spiking with a raft of new measures, the Government has published information with advice, support, guidance and factsheets regarding drinks spiking which can be found here.

The new package of measures will see: changes to the legislation to specifically reference spiking as illegal; research into self-testing kits; more training for door staff; and better education for young people, to raise awareness about the threat. There will also be coordinated police action to crack down on spiking during key weeks of the year – an approach that has proved successful in tackling other crimes, such as knife crime.

The support information published includes Guidance for venue and festival organisers and sets out information about the role they can play in preventing spiking and helping victims when it happens, including things operators can do to prevent spiking happening or to tackle it if it does happen.

The Guidance for venue and festival organisers also includes links to free drink spiking awareness e-learning, awareness posters and drinks spiking prevention and good practice guidance from the Night-Time Industries Association, which set out how to prevent spiking in your venue, what to do if someone has been spiked, and how to gather evidence to help the police.

The Link to the guidance can be found here.

As part of these measures to tackle drinks ‘spiking’, an updated version of the Guidance under s.182 of the Licensing Act 2003 has now been issued which includes specific reference to ‘spiking’ in the context of promoting the prevention of crime objective. The updated guidance can be found here.