A HEREFORDSHIRE pub has had its licence suspended for a month following police concerns over disorder.

Meeting behind closed doors, Herefordshire Council’s licensing subcommittee took action against the Inn at Bromyard in the town’s High Street after hearing of “serious incidents at the premises”.

Police licensing officer Dean Wall said the force had “no confidence” in the pub’s unnamed designated premises supervisor (DPS), who oversees its licensed activities, or the current landlord, to cope with disorder at the pub, two incidents of which the police had attended in April and May.

PC Wall asked for further conditions on the pub’s licence, for a three-month suspension to the licence, and for the removal of the DPS, minutes of the meeting show.

Jim George told the subcommittee he had owned the pub for a number of years, but that its new publicans had found it “a steep learning curve”.

Steps were being taken to address issues at the pub and “problematic” customers had been banned, he said, and warned that suspending its licence risked causing its permanent closure.

The cost of the police’s proposed condition requiring two doormen late at night “would be prohibitive, and would not create the right impression for the pub or for Bromyard”, as well as making it harder to find new tenants, he said.

Councillors on the subcommittee agreed to suspend the pub’s licence for a month, and ruled that in the event of any further disturbance the current tenancy would have to end.

They also demanded the CCTV system be repaired and extended and an incident log maintained. But they stepped away from insisting on door staff, instead setting a reduction of the pub’s licensing hours to end at 11pm seven days a week.

Herefordshire Council did not respond when asked from what date the licence suspension was to begin.