The Greenbridge Pub, soon to be the Dockle FarmouseA LEADING pub chain has chosen Swindon as home for one of its first no-smoking pubs.

JD Wetherspoon will open a Lloyds No 1 bar, aimed at a younger market than the chain's normal pubs, in Greenbridge in March and smoking will be banned everywhere in the pub at all times.

It will be the second no-smoking pub to be opened by the chain as it prepares for the full smoking ban which will start in pubs in 2008. The first opens in Exeter next week.

Cherry Jones, smoking cessation co-ordinator for Swindon Primary Care Trust, was delighted with the news.

"Obviously given the effects of second hand smoking and the distress that smoking-related diseases cause I can only see this as a positive step towards making Swindon smoke-free," she said.

"Given the prevalence of smoking in young people it is great that there is going to be an environment where young people can go where there is no-one smoking and there is no peer pressure to smoke."

The Greenbridge Pub in Bridge End Road will be converted into the Lloyds No 1 bar, to be called the Dockle Farmhouse. It will open on March 21.

Wetherspoon already has two pubs in Swindon The Savoy and the Groves Company Inn, but the Dockle Farmhouse will be the first Lloyds No 1, which plays music, unlike other Wether-spooon pubs.

Wetherspoon chief executive John Hutson said: "We wanted to gain experience of operating a non-smoking pub in advance of the smoking ban which will come into effect in pubs in 2008.

"We felt it would be easier to introduce the ban at one of our new pubs, George's Meeting House in Exeter, and have selected a second pub, at Swindon, to follow suit.

"However, other new pubs opening between the Exeter and Swindon outlets, will have both smoking and non-smoking areas for customers."

Each of the company's 650 pubs already has a non-smoking area making up about one-quarter to one-third of the pubs.

During the past 12 months new Wetherspoon pubs have operated a 70 per cent smoke-free policy until 6pm before reverting back to normal percentages.

Isabel Field