BRISTOL has one of the highest rates of alcohol-related sexual offending in the country, a report has revealed.
Sex offences where the perpetrator had been drinking happened twice as often per head of population in Bristol than the national average last year, according to a study called Local Alcohol Profiles for England.
The city's rate of 24 incidents per 100,000 people represents more than two offences per week and was the fourth highest in the country.
Bristol also had the highest estimated rate of binge drinking in the South West, with one in every four people believed to drink more than double their daily recommended alcohol intake once in a typical week.
The figures were put together for every local authority in the country by the North West Public Health Observatory. Bristol fared worse than average in many categories, including alcohol-related deaths in men – 44 per 100,000 – hospital admissions, crime and incapacity benefit claims.
NHS Bristol's alcohol strategy manager, Katie Porter, said that the rise in reported sexual offences involving alcohol could actually be a good sign, as it may show that people were more confident in reporting incidents, due to better services for rape victims.
North Somerset was worse than the national average for the number of people claiming incapacity benefits due to alcoholism but fared better than average for hospital admissions and alcohol-related crimes. South Gloucestershire ranked average or better than the England average in all areas that featured in the profiles.
Bath and North East Somerset was worse than the England average for the number of under 18s admitted to hospital as a result of drinking.
While the number of women dying as a result of conditions caused by alcohol, such as stomach cancer and unintentional injury, dropped to 14 per 100,000 in Bristol, there was a rise in the surrounding area to 15 per 100,000 in North Somerset, 14 per 100,000 in B&NES and 13 in South Gloucestershire.
The number of men in Bristol admitted to hospital for drink-attributed conditions dropped to 1,817 per 100,000 but was some way above the national and regional average.
Ms Porter said it was to be expected that Bristol would be worse than average in terms of alcohol problems.
She said: "We get more deprivation in Bristol than the England average, so we do get more alcohol-related problems in these areas and they are more concentrated.
"But there is an awful lot of daily drinking in rich areas, with people drinking wine, and the long-term effects do not really seem to have come through, as people have not been doing it long enough for the damage to show.
"Alcohol is a huge pressure, not only on the A&E department but also on places like gastro wards, where there are a lot of people going through who are alcohol dependent."
Ms Porter said that more people now drink at home than they did 15 to 20 years ago.
She said that it was positive that Bristol did not rank among the worst areas for under 18s being admitted to hospital as a result of drinking – an area in which North Somerset and South Gloucestershire had among the lowest hospital admission figures in the country.
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