PUB owners have criticised the 10pm curfew and say it is having “huge impact” on trade in the area.

Ellie Sainty, owner of the Old Spot in Dursley and the Old Fox in Coaley, said the Spot is faring worse than the Fox, as it is ‘wet led’, which means pubs that focus on selling drink, rather than food.

She said: “10pm closing is having a huge impact, especially on wet led pubs like the Spot.

“We take a significant percentage of our weekend revenue between 10pm and 12pm. We are not affected at the Fox so much as customers have usually dined by 10pm and the evening quietens off as usual.

“I do feel the Government has used a very wide ‘brush stroke’ with this curfew. We are not large town centre venues with hundreds of people mingling late into the night and increasing the possibility of spreading the virus.

“I am anticipating further restrictions ahead and we will need to look at them carefully to ensure we don’t reach a ‘tipping point’.”

Stavros Antonio of Ye Olde Dursley Hotel said: “10pm closing has affected my business, as we have lost all the weekend customers.

“It has affected all aspects of the night time economy, not just hospitality staff but also taxis and takeaways.

“I now have two weekend venues that have to close by 10pm, which means I am losing 75 per cent of my income.”

Andy Starling, who runs the Falcon Steakhouse in Wotton, said: “It’s massively affecting business. We’ve had to cull 12 covers a night.”

But Graham and Hazel Ponting of the Berkeley Arms in Cam said that their trade had not been affected, and that this was possibly due to the majority of their customers being from an older age group.

And Peter Tiley of the Salutation Inn near Berkeley had found the same.

He said: "We're not really affected by the 10pm curfew at the moment because when we opened up in July we decided to only open until 9pm most nights anyway.

"For us, 80% of our trade is done and dusted by then anyway and because of the extra staffing requirements now with table service, we decided to condense our opening hours to those we could guarantee were profitable."