Our restaurants and pubs operate in hundreds of communities across the UK, and our Alcohol and Social Responsibility for England and Wales and for Scotland ensure they all operate responsibly, safely and within the parameters of the law. Our aim is always to provide an inclusive environment for the sensible, controlled consumption of alcohol.

Responsible service

Our staff are trained not to serve alcohol to customers who look under 21 (or under 25 in Scotland) and cannot provide acceptable ID to prove they are over 18. They're also trained not to serve customers who appear to be intoxicated. We offer no incentives or encouragement to drink to excess, by carefully considering the impact of our pricing and promotions policies.

• Last year, over 675,000 customers were refused service for appearing to be under 21 (and not being able to produce acceptable identification when challenged by our staff)
• Last year, 229,000 customers were refused service for appearing to be intoxicated

This highly responsible approach has resulted in over 40 of our businesses winning Best Bar None awards last year. These awards are supported by the Home Office and aim to promote responsible management and operation of alcohol licensed premises.

Major supporters of Drinkaware

We're a major funder of Drinkaware Trust. The Trust's aim is to promote responsible drinking by finding innovative ways to challenge the national drinking culture. In turn, this helps reduce alcohol misuse and minimise alcohol-related harm.

We use the Drinkaware logo and the "Why let good times go bad?" strap line widely on our drinks menus and brand websites. Also around 1,400 of our restaurants and pubs have unit information printed on drinks menus to help promote customer awareness of responsible drinking.

Alcohol pricing and promotions

The volume of beer consumed in the on-trade is declining each year, with the significantly cheaper pricing of the off-trade encouraging people to drink, unsupervised at home.

The current duty escalator system used by the UK Government has increased excise duty at 2% more than inflation since 2008. Since 2003, the average price of a pint in the on-trade has increased almost 30% whereas duty increases appear to have had no effect in the off-trade as average prices have actually marginally declined.

The cost pressures of running the unique, supervised environment of a pub have driven the average price of a pint of lager in a UK pub to £2.96, whereas discounting in the off-trade has encouraged people to "preload" with cheap alcohol at home before going out. In their 2008 Groceries Market investigation, the Competition Commission identified ten major grocery retailers engaged in below-cost selling of alcohol.

A more detailed account of our approach to retailing alcohol can be found in our Social Responsibility Review.