Guidance

Alcohol licensing: information databases

Published 8 March 2017

1. Local Alcohol Profiles for England

The local alcohol profiles for England (LAPE) provide a national indicator set intended to inform and support local, sub-national and national alcohol policies. The profiles contain alcohol-related indicators for a range of area types or geographies, including lower and upper tier local authorities, Public Health England (PHE) centre level, clinical commissioning area, and government office region and deprivation decile. Quarterly alcohol-related hospital admission data by local authority is also provided through the LAPE website.

As the data presented in LAPE is not available at areas lower than local authority, this data will be most useful for scene setting and assessing the wider context of alcohol harm within a local authority. The alcohol indicators can be easily compared to other local areas and to wider comparator areas, like regions and nations areas, to provide greater understanding of the impact of alcohol in a local authority.

2. Primary care mortality database

The primary care mortality database (PCMD) holds mortality data as provided at the time of the registration of death along with additional GP details, geographical indexing and coroner details.

By combining data from multiple years, local areas could produce small area mortality rates to help evidence the effect of alcohol on specific areas. Mortality rates could be calculated at LSOA, MSOA and/or ward level depending on reporting requirements. Figures could also be used in conjunction with a range of other data sources, including location of licensed premises and crime data.

Monthly data is added by the second week of the following month and is available from 2006. User access to the data is based on the upper tier local authority or clinical commissioning group (CCG) structures that they are responsible for.

The PCMD is managed by the Health and Social Care Information Centre (HSCIC) and is accessed securely using Open Exeter via an N3 connection.

3. National Drug Treatment Monitoring System

The National Drug Treatment Monitoring System (NDTMS) records information on clients that are receiving specialist interventions for alcohol dependence. Specialist treatment is one strand of the government’s Alcohol Strategy, which sets out to address a wide range of health, social and criminal justice harms associated with alcohol misuse.

The NDTMS provides information on the total numbers of clients in alcohol treatment in each local authority in England, the numbers accessing treatment each year and the numbers leaving treatment. Access to unsuppressed statistics and provider level numbers is available to registered users, solely for management, quality assurance, and briefing purposes.

While these statistics provide information on the numbers of people accessing treatment for alcohol dependency, they do not give an indication on the levels of need for alcohol treatment or the prevalence of alcohol dependency in England.

As the data presented by the NDTMS are not available at areas lower than local authority level, these will be most useful for scene setting and assessing the wider context of alcohol harm within a local authority.

You can apply for access to the restricted data on the website.

4. Hospital Episode Statistics Data

Hospital Episode Statistics (HES) is a data warehouse containing details of all admissions, outpatient appointments and A&E attendances at NHS hospitals in England.

This data is collected during a patient’s time at hospital and is submitted to allow hospitals to be paid for the care they deliver. HES data is designed to be used for non-clinical purposes. It is a records-based system that covers all NHS trusts in England, including acute hospitals, primary care trusts and mental health trusts.

Access to HES data would allow a much greater scope for analysis of alcohol related/specific admissions and A&E attendances. For example, by combining data from multiple years, local areas could produce small area alcohol admission rates to help evidence the effect of alcohol on specific areas. Admission rates could be calculated at LSOA, MSOA and/or ward level depending on reporting requirements. Figures could also be used in conjunction with a range of other data sources, including location of licensed premises and crime data.

Details on how to access HES data are available from the NHS data request service.

5. Data sharing agreements

If data is being transferred between, or within, organisations, such as an ambulance service and local authority, a data sharing agreement might need to be produced which sets out the processes and controls by which information will be exchanged securely and confidentially.

Data sharing agreements set out a common set of rules to be adopted by the various organisations involved in a data sharing operation. It is good practice to have a data sharing agreement in place, and to review it regularly, particularly where information is to be shared on a large scale, or on a regular basis.

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) have produced a data sharing code of practice which states that a data sharing agreement should, at least, document the following issues:

• the purpose, or purposes, of the sharing
• the potential recipients or types of recipient and the circumstances in which they will have access
• the data to be shared
• data quality: accuracy, relevance, usability
• data security
• arrangements for the retention of shared data
• individuals’ rights – procedures for dealing with access requests, queries and complaints
• review of effectiveness/termination of the sharing agreement
• sanctions for failure to comply with the agreement or breaches by individual staff

The ICO’s data sharing code of practice also provides further details on data sharing agreements, including governance, data sharing and the law and data sharing checklists.

The Centre of Excellence for Information Sharing have also developed a range of resources to help organisations to identify their information sharing requirements and provide guidance for developing an information sharing protocol, including templates for organisations to use.