Drug and alcohol addiction services given £421 million funding boost

An extra £421 million government funding will be made available to local authorities across England to improve drug and alcohol addiction treatment and recovery services.

This funding is prioritised for areas with the highest need, based on the rate of drug deaths, deprivation, opiate and crack cocaine prevalence and crime, taking into account of the size of the treatment population.

It will enable local authorities to recruit more staff to work with people with drug and alcohol problems, support more prison leavers into treatment and recovery services, and invest in enhancing the quality of treatment they provide. It is hoped that people will benefit from residential rehabilitation or inpatient detoxification, while improvements to the recovery services will sustain them outside of treatment helping to reduce relapse rates.

The government’s drug strategy, published in December 2021, estimates that over the first three years of the strategy, the additional investment in treatment and recovery will prevent nearly 1,000 drug-related deaths – reversing the upward trend in drug deaths for the first time in a decade.

Plan is to divert people from addiction into recovery

Professor Dame Carol Black, independent advisor to the government on combatting drug misuse, said: “This continued investment is very welcome and will be crucial in supporting local authorities and their partners to increase the capacity and quality of their services for people with drug and alcohol dependence, in line with the key recommendations of my independent review of drugs. This will help realise the ambitions of the government’s 10-year drug strategy, to deliver a world-class treatment and recovery system, reduce drug use and drug related crime, and save lives.”

Local authorities can invest the funding in activity that will increase the capacity and quality of their treatment and recovery system, based on the recommendations made by Dame Carol Black’s Independent Review of Drugs.

Health and Social Care Secretary Steve Barclay said: “Drug misuse has a massive cost to society – more than 3,000 people died as a result of drug misuse in 2021. This investment in treatment and recovery services is crucial to provide people with high-quality support, with services such expanding access to life-saving overdose medicines and outreach to young people at risk of drug misuse already helping to reduce harm and improve recovery.

“This funding will help us build a much improved treatment and recovery service which will continue to save lives, improve the health and wellbeing of people across the country, and reduce pressure on the NHS by diverting people from addiction into recovery.”