Plans to widen the no-drinking zone from its current town centre boundaries received the backing of Bute and Cowal councillors this week as part of a review of the bye-laws banning public consumption of alcohol in all Argyll and Bute's major towns.

The current zone, bounded roughly by the East Princes Street to the east, Stuart Street to the south and the Gallowgate to the west, extending along Argyle Street to the Pavilion, has seen 59 offences of drinking in public since July 2005.

But faced with an increase in drinking in public outside the zone, particularly in the Meadows area, Argyll and Bute Council proposed some months ago that the ban should be extended to cover virtually the whole of Rothesay, as far as the Ardbeg end of the Skeoch Wood at one end, Wellpark Road in Craigmore at the other and the school campus at Townhead to the south.

At the request of Strathclyde Police and the Bute Community Safety Forum, however, that proposed extension has been widened even further to take in all of the High Craigmore area and the whole of the Craigmore and Montford shore, as far as the Millburn Bridge at the northern end of Ascog.

Island councillor Robert Macintyre told the meeting of the authority's Bute and Cowal area committee, held at Eaglesham House in Rothesay on Tuesday, that the extension was "badly needed", while his colleague Cllr Isobel Strong added: "We just want the zone to be extended as soon as possible."

The bye-laws which created the Rothesay no-drinking zone were brought into effect in December 1998, and the Civic Government (Scotland) Act of
1982, under which the zones are enforced, requires that the bye-laws be reviewed at least every ten years.

The newly widened zone will come into effect when the review of the bye-laws across Argyll and Bute is completed by the end of the year.