Bar staff rely on door staff for ID checks

It found that only 31% of bar staff ask for proof-of-age when door staff are present and on duty. This is a slight improvement on last year, when only a quarter of bar staff requested ID.

Serve Legal’s 1,500-strong team of 18 and 19-year-old testers made 5,778 pub and bar visits in the 12 months to the end of November.

A further study carried out in 300 pubs and bars in November found that when ID was requested, one in five bar staff accepted an incorrect one. The most common forms of ID accepted were NUS (student union) cards, other student cards or rail cards.

Serve Legal director Charlie Mowat said: “Pubcos and licensees need to impress on their bar staff that they must ask for customer ID as a matter of policy, and always err on the side of caution, particularly over the Christmas and New Year period, when they will be under even more pressure from police and local authorities to prevent underage sales.”

He explained that door staff have an important role in helping pubs prevent underage sales, but they must work with bar staff “as a team to be 100% effective”.

He added: “The only forms of bona fide ID that we strongly recommend should be acceptable are a current driving licence, a passport, or cards with the Proof-of-Age Standards Scheme [PASS] logo on it.

“We strongly support PASS, and believe that young people should be encouraged to carry a card with the scheme logo, and that the trade needs to get better at accepting it. It removes a lot of uncertainty about the age of the purchaser.”

However, Mowat said that one Serve Legal test visitor had a PASS card turned down by four separate pubs this week.