Members of the Tenby and District LVA have written to Tenby Town Council and the town's new police inspector, voicing their concerns over an application for Tesco Express to supply alcohol at their new store in High Street.

Tesco Store Ltd. have submitted an application to Pembrokeshire County Council for a 'new premises licence' that would allow them to supply alcohol off the premises from 6 am to 11 pm, from Monday to Sunday.

A letter brought before the town council at their meeting on Tuesday night from Lesley Fisher, of the local LVA, had been sent to Tenby's police inspector, Tim Hoad, listing points that licensees were particularly concerned with, which included - the times of the proposed sale of alcohol from early morning 'til late at night; and the prospect of people sitting outside the church and other places within the town drinking.

"There's concerns over a lack of supervision of how much alcohol people may have consumed - as licensees we are concerned that we will get the blame again for customers who have not been drinking in our premises," explained Mrs. Fisher.

"As you are aware, all media/TV coverage at present is commenting on cheap sales of alcohol in pubs encouraging binge drinking and anti-social behaviour.

"We are fortunate in this area that LVA members price similarly to discourage binge drinking with cheap alcohol offers.

"A huge company like Tesco offers large quantities of alcohol at cut prices. This is not what we want to encourage for a local shop within the town walls," she added.

Discussing the licence application, councillors agreed that they could not object to the application as a whole, but only to the hours that had been requested.

"Bearing in mind that there are other stores in the town that have licences to sell alcohol, it would be hard to justify objecting to one and not the other," said Clr. Paul Rapi.

Clr. Mike Thorne proposed that the town council recommend that the application be granted, but with the store's selling hours kept in line with the licensing hours of other store's in the town.