Nic Quinn, part owner of the Bradford, Windsor Castle, Bank and Rutherford hotels, said all four pubs will adopt the policy from today.

As far as he knows they will be the first in the area to make the move, but wouldn't be surprised if others follow soon after.

"We don't have to do it, but I think public health and safety is paramount," he said.

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"So we'll have a staff member who will be our Covid safety officer doing a quick non physical temperature check on the door. If you have a temperature of 37.5C or higher, we'll be turning you away."

Mr Quinn makes no apologies for the pro-active approach.

"These are difficult times and we have to make adjustments, just like we do with social distancing," he said.

"It's a safety issue ... obviously we don't want to lose business but we have to try to keep our patrons and staff safe.

"Our Covid officers will be wearing distinguishable vests, and their job will be to check temperatures, make sure social distancing is being followed, and to clean down tables after people leave or use the salt and pepper shakers and so on."

Mr Quinn has also put a call out for people to be more considerate when unable to attend a booking.

"Like all hotels and restaurants, we're on reduced numbers, so there's nothing more demoralising than having people make a booking and just not turn up," he said.

"We understand that things come up and plans sometimes have to change, but every night this happens. All we're asking people to do is take the 30 seconds required to let us know so we can make the table available for someone else.

"We are all just struggling along right now, so an empty table really hurts."

He said he doesn't expect this week's further crackdown on numbers - no groups of more than 10 people with a 300 person maximum - to impact greatly.

"The smaller pubs like the Bank and Rutherford Hotels couldn't get 300 people anyway under social distancing, so they're not really affected," he said.

"The Windsor could just get to 300, so it is largely unchanged. It's really only the Bradford that would be affected, but not in a major way."

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