A PUB landlord is planning to appeal after a chief constable objected to his application for longer opening hours.

Peter Wood, landlord of the Black Swan in Thornton-Le-Moor, near Northallerton, North Yorkshire, applied to Hambleton District Council to extend his opening times.

He wanted to be able to serve alcohol from 11am to 2am every day, instead of the present 11am to 11pm.

His application attracted five objections - including one from Della Cannings, Chief Constable of North Yorkshire Police, who lives in the village.

She wrote a letter to the council and spoke at Friday's licensing committee meeting - on both occasions as a local resident and private citizen, rather than a police officer.

After hearing the objections, Mr Wood changed his application, reducing the proposed hours to 1am.

The committee decided to grant an extension of hours, but only to 11.30pm, Sunday to Thursday and midnight on Fridays and Saturdays.

Mr Wood said: "It just seems a bit unfair. The police had no objections, environmental health had no objections and there has never been any trouble here.

"We already have a supper licence, so we can serve people eating in the restaurant until midnight anyway.

"We'll have to wait and see what it says when they send the report through from the meeting, but we are going to appeal.

"We are asking people round about what happened with their licences to see how they have got on."

In her letter to the committee, Ms Cannings said: "Thornton-Le-Moor is a peaceful rural village, the nature of which would be destroyed should the public house be granted extended hours of operating on a regular basis and with the facility to have music etc until 2am.

"Those of us who work, the youngsters who need to get up for school and the retired, should all be able to reckon on having quiet night-times in which to sleep.

"This is not the place for a nightclub scenario.

"The potential for increased criminality, drink driving, road casualties and anti-social behaviour is obvious and well evidenced at other locations.

"There are adequate nightclub facilities in nearby urban areas which have operated for a number of years and there appears to be no market for any further such facilities."