DRINK drivers caught by police over the Christmas and New Year holidays may have to forfeit their leisure time as punishment.

If caught over the limit, the pre-sentence report written on the offender is likely to recommend that they spend 14 Saturday's in the classroom. This will follow four sessions of pre-programme preparation with a case manager, West Mercia Probation service warn.

During this time offenders will have to justify the reasons why they got into the situation, and what they should do to ensure it never happens again.

Hilary Harrison a tutor in the Probation Programmes Unit based in Telford will be one of the first trainers to deliver the accredited Home Office initiative in the New Year.

"Many drink drivers find themselves behind the driving wheel due to a lack of knowledge about alcohol and driving, lack of adequate planning, anti-social attitudes, lack of ability to generate alternatives and poor emotional recognition and control," said Hilary.

"Because of all these outside influences the offender may make poor decisions, rationalises the problem wrongly and finds reasons to justify why they decide to drive.

"We hope that over the 14 weeks spent with us, role playing and cartooning, the decision they make is not to put themselves behind the wheel of a car if they have been drinking."

Already tried and tested in South Yorkshire, Hilary and three of her colleagues will co-tutor the rolling programme providing and increasing knowledge about alcohol and driving.

She added: "Our main aim is to cut deaths by drink drivers. The latest figures we have for the whole of 1996 are; 3,274 fatal accidents. Among these fatalities, some 480 were caused by drink impaired drivers.

"Besides these there were 232,665 other accidents of which approximately 10,000 were caused by drink impaired drivers."