A PUB on the main road through Winton has closed suddenly after the landlady said that there were not enough customers coming in to keep it open.

The Talbot, on Wimborne Road, shut its doors on Monday, July 1, with a sign suggesting that the pub was closed due to a ‘lack of CCTV and police insistence’.

However, when the Daily Echo spoke to the landlady of The Talbot, she said that that was the final straw for her closing the doors of the pub for thelast time.

Tracey Read said: “Enterprise, which owns the pub, tie you in and the barrelage is twice the price of other places. They tie you in so that you can’t buy it from anywhere else.”

She added: “I paid £3,000 for fixtures and fittings, and unfortunately, a lot of those didn’t work.

“Basically, there wasn’t enough customers to bring in the money to keep it running, when you’re paying for things like security at £125 a weekend, which we have to have under the licence, and £200-£300 if you run entertainment at the weekend.

“The rent was £1,000 a week, which again you are tied into with a maintenance contract with Enterprise, so I gave them six months notice and have handed the keys back.

“You’ve got VAT and PAYE on top of that and I just couldn’t afford to keep running it.”

An Enterprise spokesperson said: “We recognise that the Talbot is a great community pub and we can confirm that we worked very hard with Ms Read, providing support in various different ways, to help her develop a successful pub business.

“We work with thousands of successful publicans who recognise the benefits of the tied pub business model. It provides them with a low cost of entry giving them the opportunity to run their own business, and they receive the investment and support of a national pub company.”

A spokesperson for Dorset Police did not find any record of insistence for the pub to close.