AN arts and crafts dealer in Newcastle Emlyn has made an impassioned appeal to Carmarthenshire Council not to grant a pub two doors down longer opening hours.

Narda Mantle claimed that extended opening hours for pubs in Newcastle Emlyn had been a “disaster” for the market town.

In a letter to the council’s licensing department objecting to The Pelican Inn’s application to open until 2.30am on Friday and Saturday nights and midnight on Monday to Thursday, Ms Mantle said she had been in business on Sycamore Street for 20 years and put more than £1 million into the local economy.

“I didn’t achieve that by just sitting behind the counter and looking pretty,” she said.

“It’s hard work, and it’s constant — a lifestyle rather than a job and a juggle to make ends meet.”

Ms Mantle said she lived above her shop — The Maker’s Mark — and claimed late opening hours for pubs were having a “colossal” impact on her well-being and that of the town.

Although she had some warm words for The Pelican Inn, she said taxis frequently idled outside her flat at closing time, with the drivers then hammering on the pub’s door to rouse their fares.

“You’re thinking that it’s just for a few minutes before they pick up their clients, aren’t you?” she said.

“I know that you are because this would be logical, reasonable, sensible. But no! Whether they are waiting 15 minutes or an hour they all without fail leave their engines running.”

She likened the effect to a “pulsating drone with a raah ta-ta-ta beat if their engines aren’t up to scratch”.

Some of the drivers, she said, were “sweethearts” but a few were “gruff and arsey and have gone and sat with their engines around by the clock tower instead”.

Ms Mantle added that the noise of the drivers then banging on the pub’s door “would wake the dead” and “would certainly wake me if I was naive enough to go to sleep before 2am”.

She also claimed that music coming for the pub was, on occasions, “completely unacceptable”.

She went on: “By unacceptable, I mean being able to hear exactly which tracks are being played while working inside (my flat) with all the all the doors and windows closed.

“Motorhead, and other such heavy metal bands, I am not a fan.”

Ms Mantle said she understood that The Pelican Inn management would want longer hours “to even out the playing field with other pubs”, and said its manager “runs a darn clean pub”.

She said: “He puts a lot of effort into his window displays, amusing chalk boards, flower displays.

“He has a reputation for throwing people out — which is a positive thing. He has standards and he won’t tolerate drug-taking, aggressive drunken idiots, louts and yobs. It’s the pub I recommend to my customers.”

But she claimed that longer pub opening hours could usher in a town of “charity shops, pubs and DHSS tenants”.

Another objector who lived near the rear of The Pelican Inn claimed she was disturbed by late-night noise and that the thought of it going on for longer was “intolerable”.

The council has received two referrals from Dyfed-Powys Police about the pub since 2016.

Police have not objected to the extended hours application but recommended 19 conditions, including that no customers enter or re-enter the premises after midnight.

The application was due to be decided at a council licensing sub-committee meeting on September 18 but it was adjourned.