Rural pubs suffer rise in disorder'

by John Harrington

The Government has been criticised for taking its eye off crime and disorder in and around rural pubs after new figures reveal the scale of the problem.

More than 2,000 alcohol-related violent crimes were committed in each of four largely rural police regions during 2004, according to new Home Office figures leaked to the Liberal Democrats.

Lib Dem culture spokesman Don Foster said: "These figures show that cities don't have a monopoly on alcohol-fuelled violence.

"There is clearly a rural problem, but all the Government's latest measures, for example their proposal for alcohol disorder zones, are largely focused on urban areas," he told The Daily Telegraph.

National Pubwatch operations support executive Bill Stone, who has run several pubs in urban and rural areas, said country pubs were often isolated and had no access to information on troublemakers from nearby licensees, making them vulnerable to attacks.

He said many licensees in rural areas did not think it was a serious issue.

"With pubwatch getting more and more effective in towns, trouble tends to move to the country pubs," Stone said.

"Pubs under the new legislation will be partly responsible for policing their own places. It's time rural pubs recognised that they had a problem."

Stone said Emmerdale, the TV soap set in rural Yorkshire, was the only major soap that had not agreed to show the pubwatch logo in its main pub. "Their attitude is, [crime] doesn't happen in country pubs'," he said.