Disgrace!

And Magistrates have been labelled "Scrooges" for imposing an 11.30pm last orders call in the city over the festive weekend.

Pubs have been granted extended opening hours on Christmas Eve and Boxing Day until 11.30pm. On New Year's Eve they are allowed to open until 12.30am.

But in Halifax pubs can open until 12.30am on Christmas Eve and Boxing Day. In Leeds they can call last orders at 1am on New Year's Eve.

At yesterday's Bicla meeting, vice chairman John Pennington said he was astounded at Bradford's opening hours.

"Are we falling behind neighbouring towns and cities again?" he said.

"We have just had these licensing hours imposed on us. There has been no consultation with Bicla. It's a disgrace.

"I think we should be allowed the same opening hours as other places like Halifax."

Secretary of Bicla Sergeant Chris Plowman said the police would not oppose longer hours over the festive season.

But committee member June Graham said: "If other pubs in other areas can open until later, why can't we in Bradford?

"We have been told we can open 36 hours for the Millennium, but we can't open much longer than normal this year."

"The busiest place in the city is the Interchange with people leaving the city. Over the years the trade has become less profitable so we need all the help and support we can get. Christmas is a time when we get money back over the bar but people are going to go elsewhere so they can drink for longer. I think the magistrates are Scrooges."

Chairman of Bicla David Haigh, who runs Haighy's in Lumb Lane, said: "It would probably be better if magistrates gave longer opening hours and left it to individual landlords to decide how long they remained open."

But David Chandler, Bradford justice's clerk, defended the decision. He said: "If pubs wanted to extend their opening hours they could have made an application for it.

"It has been the same situation for many years. There's no point in every single pub coming to make an application all at once. That's why we make an across-the-board extension."

Mr Chandler said a meeting was to be set up within the next month between justice's clerks across West Yorkshire in an effort to get more consistency between courts on issues such as licensing.

Mrs Graham said many landlords were unaware they could apply for further extensions and she would be looking into the matter for future years.

l Nightclubs in Bradford can now hire a sniffer dog to search customers for drugs.

The trained dog can sniff out drugs such as Ecstasy, heroin, amphetamines and marijuana.

It has already been used at Lingards nightclub.

Sergeant Plowman said: "Any licensee who is going to take up this sort of innovative approach to detect drugs brought into clubs has got to be praised."

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.