Kent pub rakes in £20,000 after collecting fines from drinkers using their mobile phones

A pub landlord fed up with customers staring at their smartphones while inside his premises has banned them – and made a fortune in fines.

Mark Robson, who runs the Just Reproach in Deal, Kent, decided to get tough with phone-obsessed drinkers and fined them £1 whenever their phones rang or beeped, according to The Sun.

A notice in the pub, that features a ‘no mobile phone’ sign, reads: ‘Your babbling disregard for others is more than a little annoying.’

Now Mr Robson has managed to pull in an astonishing £20,000 as a result of his policy, which was designed to get locals chatting again.

Pub regular Michael Spicer told The Sun: ‘The whole idea is people speak to each other.

‘One day a local was asked for his phone number by a stranger.

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‘By the time he’d given it out several of us had got it down and rung it, it cost him about seven pounds.’

The money made from the fines will be donated to charity.