NEARLY 90 drinkers have now joined East Lancashire’s toughest pub watch ‘banned’ list, it has been revealed.

No fewer than 16 are now on the wrong end of a lifetime ban and a further 60-plus are now serving suspensions ranging from a few months to five years.

And Colne councillor Neil Butterworth says he has first-hand knowledge that the Colne Against Night-time Disorder (CAND) genuinely does work.

The Colne list has significantly more names included than larger similar initiatives covering Burnley and Nelson.

He told the Lancashire Telegraph: “It is one of the best schemes that publicans and the police have come up with.

“I know people who have been on the CAND list and they will do everything that they can to come off it because it really does affect their lives. There is also a system whereby people can appeal, if they feel that they have been hard done by, and there have been occasions when the appeals have succeeded.

“So the system does work and it is fair when it needs to be. I know that especially over Christmas and New Year, when people on the list couldn’t go out with their friends, it was particularly hard.”

One drinker must serve a ban until January 2018, another six are excluded until various dates in 2017 and another 13 are suspended until 2016.

Maggie Owens, CAND chairman, who runs the Union Exchange in Colne, said: “There have been quite as few who have come off the list recently – but some go back on it again almost straight away. It’s a really good scheme.”