People buying a drink in a Milton Keynes pub or bar could be missing out on a share of around £40,000 of beer and wine, Milton Keynes City Council’s Trading Standards have warned.
Following a national Trading Standards investigation which revealed short-measured drinks in UK pubs and bars cost the average consumer around £115 per year, Milton Keynes Trading Standards ran a local exercise – the first of its kind – to check if city pub servings are measuring up.
Trading Standards investigators found that 70% of the drinks checked (ten 175ml glasses of wine and ten pints of beer) were short measured, some by more than 10%. On average, wine was short by 6% and beer by 5%.
The Weights and Measures (Intoxicating Liquor) Order 1988 sets out the legal obligations for selling alcohol. Although each business visited was advised of the investigation findings and given guidance, Trading Standards officers want city consumers to be aware of their rights when they’re out for a drink.
Many glasses in pubs, bars and restaurants show a measuring line by which consumers can judge the serving. If beer or wine looks more than 5% short, it’s fine to ask for a top up.
A head of beer is legally part of the measure and may reasonably form up to 5% of a serving. However, if the head is too large – more than 5%, as it was in half of the short-measured pints checked by Milton Keynes Trading Standards – you are well within your rights to ask bar staff for an immediate top up.
If you continue to be short measured, get in touch with Milton Keynes Trading Standards.
Eco Park will supercharge sustainability goals
Milton Keynes City Council has published major plans to transform its waste recovery facility in Wolverton into a state-of-the-art Eco Park that will provide green energy to the city for a more sustainable future.
Since 2018, the city council has been using clean methods to turn household rubbish into sustainable electricity at the Wolverton site, which means barely any of MK’s waste goes to landfill.
Now, it has revealed plans for a technologically advanced Eco Park that will reduce the growing city’s carbon emissions and become the one of the UK’s most sustainable places to manage waste.
Benefits from the Eco Park for local people include:
- Distributing heat naturally created by processing waste across the city into homes and businesses.
- Generating more energy so the city’s waste collection and landscaping fleet becomes entirely powered by waste (currently around a third).
- New technology to shred unwanted tyres into material that would be used to build and repair roads.
- A carbon sink forest that would absorb carbon from the atmosphere.
- New facilities to deal with more types of waste locally, including electrical goods and other hard-to-process items, meaning fewer miles need to be travelled.
The council’s investment into developing the Eco Park would mean lower processing costs over the longer term, delivering better value for money.
In addition, the site would be made more efficient to manage the extra waste being produced by the growing city. It would also be home to a public education centre to help the next generation become even better at reuse and recycling.
Find out more at www.milton-keynes.gov.uk
Leader Milton Keynes
City Council
