Public Health minister Dawn Primarolo will announce that regional alcohol managers will be appointed across the country to give out advice on drinking, and money will also be spent on increasing access to specialist treatment.

Currently there is just one place for every 18 people who show signs of dependency.

Dawn Primarolo said: ‘More than a quarter of adults in England drink above government guidelines and around 15,000 people die because of alcohol every year. We clearly have a serious problem.

‘Starting with the most deprived areas, we are going to roll out a new programme which will help drinkers at risk. For every pound spent on alcohol intervention, five pounds are saved by the public purse - so this is money well spent.’

It is hoped the £6 million measures will help reduce alcohol-related harm.
They include establishing regional alcohol managers, pulling together local information, and increasing access to specialist treatments.

Twenty of the most deprived primary care trusts in the country will share £3 million of the funding.

They include Newcastle PCT, Middlesbrough PCT, Heart of Birmingham PCT, Manchester PCT, Leicester City PCT, Nottingham City PCT, North Lincolnshire PCT, South Birmingham PCT, Oldham PCT and Blackpool PCT.

Another £2.7 million will be spent on regional alcohol managers and £450,000 will go to the National Support Team. An extra £1 million will fund a new Alcohol Learning Centre.

The money is released just a week after a critical report from the National Audit Office that the NHS is not doing enough to tackle alcohol misuse.

It blamed poor planning and needs assessment by primary care trusts. The government's spending watchdog says a quarter of PCTs have not assessed local problems properly so are unable to offer suitable services.

The health effects of alcohol misuse cost the NHS around £2.7bn a year - more than twoper cent of NHS expenditure. But PCTs are spending just over 0.1 per cent of their annual turnover on services to tackle the problem.

National Audit Office head Tim Burr said: 'Alcohol misuse constitutes a heavy and increasing burden on the NHS.

If services to tackle alcohol misuse are going to make a bigger difference, primary care trusts need to understand better the scale of the problem in their local communities.'

Today's announcement also coincides with the launch of a new European-wide website to promote responsible drinking and target alcohol misuse across Europe at http://www.responsibledrinking.eu/.

The European Union site will act as a gateway to national safe drinking websites, and will provide basic information for other countries that do not have no such sites.

Thirteen national websites will be available through the EU’s portal by the end of 2008, and many of these have been created around an EU-approved template. The British national website is run by The Drinkaware Trust.