OFF-licences are being urged to help fight under-age drinking and the anti-social behaviour that goes with it.

Businesses in Consett and Stanley will be invited this weekend to sign up to Challenge 25, which requires shops and bars to ask for proof of age from anyone who looks under 25 and to refuse the sale of it is not forthcoming.

Increasingly it is the policy used by supermarket chains and many nightspots have been obliged to adopt it.

Durham Constabulary aims to make the entire force area a Challenge 25 area and uniformed officers and community support officers will visit premises in the two towns Saturday and Sunday to enlist their support.

Neighbourhood police officers and representatives of the force’s partner organisations will be engaging with young people in the Chester-le-Street area.

Operation Aries was launched in July and involves the police and their partners working with Community Alcohol Partnerships (CAP), a community interest organisation.

Sgt Mick Urwin, the project manager of Operation Aries, said off-licences would be asked to sign a retailer/partner agreement, which “is the cornerstone in establishing a standard that all partners can expect from each other.

“It is about all of us working together to minimise the harm that under-18s can come to if they drink alcohol to excess.

“There are a number of key themes, one of which is engagement, and the activity we will see from neighbourhood officers this weekend in Consett and Stanley is just that.

“Talking to, and supporting, our off-licences together with the major supermarkets is vital to the success of the project in reducing the availability of alcohol to under-age drinkers and the associated drink-fuelled anti-social behaviour.”

Since Operation Aries began, 231 young people have been stopped and found to be carrying alcohol and nine adults have been given £90 fixed penalty fines for buying alcohol for under-18 drinkers.

Only two shops have failed test purchase operations run by Durham County Council Trading Standards and police and sold alcohol to under-age customers.

They were both given £90 fixed penalty fines.

During the school summer holidays 300 underage drinkers were referred to 4Real, the County Durham Youth Drug and Alcohol Service.

The alcohol confiscated from them included 100 litres of lager, 80 litres of cider and 16 litres of vodka.