More street drunk tanks could be set up to keep ‘frankly selfish’ New Year’s Eve and weekend partygoers away from hospital

The chief executive of NHS England has accused drunken revellers of being “frankly selfish” when they rely on the health service to help them and has indicated that more “drunk tanks” could be set up to keep intoxicated people out of overstretched accident and emergency wards.

Simon Stevens said the rollout of drunk tanks, sometimes in supervised buses or repurposed cafes, could be scaled up next year depending on their success this New Year’s Eve and the results of a national study on their impact due to be completed in the coming months.

Councils, ambulance services and police in Newcastle, Bristol, Manchester and Cardiff already provide areas where drunk people can be checked by health professionals and be supervised as they sleep off alcohol without having to go to hospital. There are believed to be about 16 drunk tanks operating in the UK, including two in Belfast. Some operate by trying to keep drunk people awake, while others let them sleep. The Bristol drunk tank is essentially a converted lorry kitted out with rows of wipe-clean beds staffed by paramedics.

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“When the health service is pulling out all the stops to care for sick and vulnerable patients who rightly and genuinely need our support, it’s frankly selfish when ambulance paramedics and A&E nurses have to be diverted to looking after revellers who have overindulged and who just need somewhere to safely sleep it off,” said Stevens.

“NHS doesn’t stand for National Hangover Service, but in the run-up to Christmas, having been out with ambulance crews on night shifts in London and the West Midlands, I’ve seen first-hand how paramedics and A&Es are being called on to deal with drunk and often aggressive people.”

An estimated 12-15% of attendances at emergency departments in the UK are due to acute alcohol intoxication, peaking on Friday and Saturday nights and around the Christmas festivities when as many as 70% of attendances can be alcohol-related, according to NHS England.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A woman lies on a bench outside a bar in Bristol. Photograph: Matt Cardy/Getty Images

Simon Moore, a professor of public health research at Cardiff University, is leading a research project into the effectiveness of drunk tanks. He said early results showed they had led to a reduction in violence against staff in A&E departments by keeping some of the liveliest drunks out of hospitals.

Hospitals in towns and cities operating alcohol intoxication management services – the official name for drunk tanks – see around 40% fewer assaults on A&E staff, the evidence suggests.

“There are some incredibly drunk people [in the drunk tanks] and some lose control,” Moore said. “The staff sometimes call it the ‘triple crown’: they defecate, urinate and vomit. It gets a bit messy. One of the most important pieces of equipment is a mop and bucket.”

He said attempts to ask users about their experience of the drunk tanks had been hampered because some were so drunk they couldn’t remember being there.

Moore said looking after very drunk people was very labour-intensive, as they can lose their gag reflex and so have to be observed constantly to ensure they do not choke on their own vomit.

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However, some observers have raised concerns that if drunk tanks become routine in town centres, they could enable more people to get paralytically drunk.

“What we do not want to do is to create a safety net for people who go out and binge-drink and so they think it is OK because we pick them up at the end of the night,” a Met police commander, Simon Letchford, told the Greater London Assembly in 2015. “There has to be a consequence for their behaviour. I would certainly look at what more we can do to put that consequence in so that there is a cost for them.

“The NHS is very reluctant about this because of the principle of ‘free at the point of treatment’, but it cannot be right that every Friday night someone goes out and gets drunk and then we look after them. We have to do something about trying to treat them, help them and support them so that they do not do that and so that there is a consequence.”