Coulson: Time to reflect on the ADZ - Administrative Disaster Zone

In the face of a loud and persistent clamour of opposition, the Government has pushed ahead with its unpopular and convoluted scheme for alcohol disorder zones (ADZs) and we now await the Commencement Order that will duly bring the relevant legislation into effect.

There is a great deal of disinformation going around, however, based on a lack of understanding of the complexities of this measure. It will not take immediate effect — ADZs will not spring up overnight — and there will not be licensees in 30 towns and cities suddenly facing a charge of £100 a week.

First of all, the Home Office says that the relevant orders will be laid "some time in June" — they cannot be more specific at this stage. Even then, there is a great deal of work to be done by any willing local authority before an ADZ will actually come into being, and it is a fair bet that there will be challenges to the way the first of them do it.

If there are any who do it.

You see, it is not just within the trade that the unpopularity exists. In general, local government recognises this measure as a poisoned chalice: no abundance of guidance notes or explanatory memoranda can disguise the fact that implementing an ADZ is a minefield, open to challenge and dispute at every stage, and with an outcome that might well be both costly and ineffectual.

If one looks at the preliminary stages of implementing a scheme, it is clear that there is around a minimum of two months from the time the council decides to promulgate a proposal for an ADZ, to the time it could reasonably come into force.

This is because it must allow a period of at least 28 days for consultation with everyone, then publish a response to that consultation before putting together an action plan, if it decides to go ahead.

Of course, if there is strong and cogent opposition to the ADZ they can withdraw, even at that stage.

The action plan itself does not constitute the ADZ: it is said to be a set of "preventative measures in the public space and those designed to improve premises' operating practices". The plan can include voluntary financial contributions from licence-holders.

It is only if the plan itself is manifestly failing that the actual ADZ can come into effect. Logic dictates that you cannot say a plan has "failed" in the first couple of weeks of implementation — unless there is a total lack of cooperation from the licensed trade, which again, will be open to debate. So it is most unlikely that an ADZ will be put in place until at least eight weeks after the first proposal, and it could be longer.

The real problem for local government is in setting the charges and the charging bands to the licensed trade. It is here that the whole scheme goes completely off the rails.

One of the main criticisms of the measure highlighted by both the Lords and Commons committees is the obscure method of fixing payments for "above-normal" levels of enforcement. What this means, who will pay and at what level, is going to take many man-hours of planning and calculation in the town hall, which many local authorities are entirely reluctant to do in the current financial climate.

All this means that whoever sticks his head over the parapet and em-barks on this exercise is likely to be heavily scrutinised and probably challenged at every stage, so that we are looking at August or September before an ADZ finally takes effect.

Others may be examined and after some costs, will be shelved. Those costs fall on the rate-payers, who may themselves be strongly opposed to having the centre of their town marked out as a disorder zone. It really is the worst possible scenario.