Senior police officers and alcohol industry figures have turned on the OFT over its failure to offer guidance on the legality of voluntary supermarket high-strength alcohol bans.
While the OFT said it was “closely monitoring” the rapid spread of schemes across the country - which has seen a raft of products taken off shelves in more than 50 towns and cities - it is still refusing to say whether it will step in.
This week, senior alcohol industry figures called on the OFT to take action, claiming the schemes were in breach of competition law.
Meanwhile, Nottinghamshire Police has written to the watchdog demanding to know if it will support its plans to bring in a voluntary ban on products above 5.6% abv after a string of supermarkets refused to take part in the scheme, citing competition fears.
Officers running the scheme have accused supermarkets of operating double standards by agreeing to the voluntary removal in some parts of the country and stonewalling mooted schemes elsewhere.
The number of schemes has snowballed since the government’s u-turn on minimum pricing in July and after the success of Suffolk Police’s Reducing the Strength Campaign, which targeted cheap alcohol products above 6.5% abv.
Last week, East of England Co-op said it would be removing all cheap high-strength beers across its entire estate of stores and even put out a YouTube video to back the campaign.
Lewis Bryan, senior licensing officer at Nottinghamshire Police, said The Co-operative Group had agreed to a limited local trial of the scheme in Nottingham but had expressed concerns about its legality.
“All the others have entirely stonewalled us or ignored us totally,” he added. “Tesco has ignored our emails entirely.”
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