A quarter of adults are drinking in quantities that are hazardous to their health, with more than 850,000 people needing hospital treatment for alcohol-related problems in a year, latest figures show.

One in three men and one in six women are at risk of physical and psychological harm as a result of their drinking habits, according to the annual report on alcohol consumption. More than one in 20 men and one in 50 women were also considered to be harmful drinkers and likely to suffer related problems such as liver disease or depression.

The number of people admitted to hospital in England with alcohol-related problems has risen by 69 per cent in five years, to 863,000 in 2007-08, although changes to data collection — which now include secondary diagnoses, such as alcohol-related injuries — have contributed to the surge in cases. Two thirds of the admissions were men.

The cost to the NHS of supplying drugs for the treatment of alcohol dependency is £2.4 million, up 39 per cent on 2003.

The NHS Information Centre report, Statistics on Alcohol: England 2009, brings information on alcohol together from a variety of sources to construct the most detailed picture of the nation’s habits.

There were were 6,541 deaths directly related to alcohol in 2007, an increase of 19 per cent since 2001. The majority of these, 4,249, were due to liver disease.

The report found that 9 per cent of men and 4 per cent of women showed some signs of alcohol dependency, a slight decrease on the 2000 figures of 11.5 per cent of men and no change in the rate among women.

The report will increase pressure on the Government to take action to curb excessive drinking. Earlier this year Sir Liam Donaldson, the Chief Medical Officer for England, warned that easy access to cheap alcohol was “killing us as never before” and must be curbed with tough licensing laws, price rises and a shift in public opinion.

In the NHS report, people were defined by experts as having “hazardous” drinking levels based on a detailed questionnaire. This included questions on how much they drank, how they felt about it, whether they suffered injuries and how much they consumed in one session.

Safe drinking levels recommended by the NHS are no more than three to four units of alcohol per day for men and two to three per day for women. The report showed that, in 2007, 41 per cent of men drank more than four units on at least one day during the week before they were interviewed, and a third of women drank more than three units on at least one day.

One in four men reported drinking more than eight units and one in six women reported drinking more than six units on at least one day in the week before interview.

The report estimates that in 2007, 17 per cent of children aged 11 to 15 thought it was acceptable to get drunk at least once a week. The proportion of pupils who have never had an alcoholic drink was 46 per cent in 2007, compared with 39 per cent in 2003.

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