Bars and clubs pay £1,000 for town security

nightclub, Five Bar and University of Huddersfield.

Mr Hollingsworth, who has been running Pubwatch for the last three years, said: “The situation in the town centre on a weekend has been getting worse and it’s been escalating over the years. We are past the stage of getting cross about it and decided we needed to actually do something practical.

“The police, understandably, and Kirklees Council are behind us on this.

“What we are doing is trying to safeguard our customers.

“We don’t want people not to come into the town centre and enjoy themselves.

“The idea is they patrol the town centre and if they see anything they use Apex Police radios – commonly used by Pubwatch and Shopwatch schemes across the country – to the town centre CCTV people who monitor the area.

“The people we are using are accredited door staff and we hope that whenever possible they will be able to intervene early on before it becomes a problem.

“It seems to have worked really well this weekend with the teams intervening in a couple of incidents and the more bars and clubs we can persuade to come on board the better it will be.

“We would love to run it on a more regular basis but it’s expensive at getting on for £100 for each establishment.”

The outcome of the trial run will be discussed at the next meeting of the Pubwatch at the University of Huddersfield on Wednesday, April 18.

West Yorkshire Police Kirklees Council have approached for comment.