Share your views on addressing alcohol-related harm

The Council is in the early stages of developing a Local Alcohol Policy (LAP), which can set out how alcohol should be sold and supplied in Christchurch and Banks Peninsula, and include policies to restrict the number, location, and opening hours of licensed premises, such as bars, cafés and restaurants, supermarkets and bottle stores. 

As part of this development, the Council has researched the drivers and impacts of alcohol-related harm, and drafted a number of options to help address them. Public feedback has now opened on these options. 

“The options we’re seeking feedback on range from changing the hours that on- and off-licence premises can be open at night, to restricting where licensed premises can be located, to a one-way door policy for on-licences after a certain hour,” says David Griffiths, Head of Strategic Policy and Resilience. 

Read the options and have your say here.

“All our options have been informed by early discussions we’ve had with some of the key stakeholders in this area – NZ Police, Te Whatu Ora, licensing inspectors, hospitality representatives, supermarkets and off-licence retailer representatives, and local boards who know their communities best,” Mr Griffiths says. 

“We’re also open to new options that we may not have considered – our LAP is very much a blank canvas at this stage, and if you have ideas for how it might work, now is your best opportunity to influence it.” 

Feedback closes on Sunday 9 March. Council staff will then analyse the feedback and get to work creating a Draft Local Alcohol Policy, which if adopted for consultation, would go out for a special consultative procedure in April 2025 with the aim of having any LAP in place before the local elections in October 2025. If a final LAP is adopted, it must be reviewed every six years.    

Read more on the LAP and subscribe to updates here.