LANDLORDS in Darlington have called time on revellers intent on causing trouble.

Darlington police have teamed up with Darlington Borough Council and the town pubs to stamp out under-age drinking and alcohol-related anti-social behaviour.

The partnership relaunched its Pubwatch scheme yesterday. Pub staff will meet police officers on a regular basis.

Inspector Sue Collingwood said: "The Pubwatch scheme is a nationwide initiative which began several years ago. Darlington had a scheme in place, however, for various reasons it fell by the wayside and now we have formed a new team to tackle the issues of under-age drinking and anti-social behaviour.

"The committee will meet on a regular basis.

"Due to the radio systems in place in pubs, the police will be able to keep in touch with the pubs and the pubs will be able to contact each other.

"The committee has a strict policy in place, which will enable pubs to ban the people behind the anti-social behaviour. If you are banned from one pub under the scheme, you will be banned from all pubs in the scheme."

Already, 27 of the 33 town centre pubs have signed up.

The first task for the committee is to get the remaining six venues on board.

The relaunch took place at Flares, in Skinnergate. Its licensee Steve Walker is chairman of the scheme