Statistics on Alcohol: England

This note provides a summary of statistics on alcohol consumption among adults and children in England. Data on alcohol-related hospital admissions in England and alcohol-related deaths in England, the UK and worldwide is also shown.

The proportion of men and women drinking in the past week in Great Britain has followed a declining trend since 2005, which the exception of drinking among men increasing slightly in 2018, the last year of available data.

Men continue to be more likely to drink than women and young adults drink less frequently than older age groups. However, young adults are more likely to exceed daily benchmarks regarding alcohol consumption.

In 2018, 9% of children aged 11-15 in England had drunk alcohol in the last week; this figure has remained stable since 2013, following a decline from a peak of 27% in 1996. Most pupils who drank in the last week had done so on one or two days (59% and 24% respectively). On the days they did drink, 40% drank five or more units of alcohol on average.

Alcohol-related conditions were responsible for 357,660 hospital admissions in England in 2018/19, according to the narrow measure (2.1% of all admissions). This figure increases to 1.26 million admissions, according to the broad measure (7.4%).

There were 7,524 alcohol-specific deaths in the UK in 2018. Alcoholic liver disease was the most common cause, accounting for 76% of alcohol-specific deaths.