THE owner of a seafront fish and chip shop says drunken yobs have cost him more than £7,000 in window repairs in the past year

THE owner of a seafront fish and chip shop says drunken yobs have cost him more than £7,000 in window repairs in the past year.The windows of Winstons Fish Bar in Beach Road have just been smashed for the eighth time this year.Owner Lee Carpenter is furious about the late-night attacks on his premises and the other businesses in the area.On one occasion yobs smashed his windows, broke inside and stole his cash register. A man with a metal detector found it buried in the sand on the beach a few days later.Mr Carpenter, who has owned Winstons for three years, said: "We are supposed to have CCTV but it never seems to do any good or help catch any of the culprits."The owners of the cafe over road have had to put shutters up in the windows but I don't want to have to do that. It looks unattractive and tourists don't want to see that when they come to Weston."On one hand we want a continental cafe culture but it's no good if we cannot keep the binge drinkers from vandalising the town."Weston sector Inspector, Yan Georgiou, said: "It is sad Mr Carpenter has found himself in this position, but short of putting an officer and having CCTV on every corner of every street I do not know what else we can do. "We invest as much manpower as possible in this area of town and have even re-arranged shift patterns to ensure it is heavily policed at busier times, especially the weekends."This kind of opportunist crime is very difficult to police and we do not have the resources to police all areas at all times. Often at weekends we fill Weston station with arrests and make a large dent in Bridgwater, Taunton and even Bristol stations with the overflow, so police officers are clearly doing all they can.