A YOUTH café has been started in Okehampton on weekday evenings, following a demand from the town's young people and funding from Devon County Council.

The King's Arms public house in St James Street has made a games room, which is completely separate to the pub, into a social space for 12 to 17-year-olds.

There are no membership fees or charges, it's just a place where youngsters can meet and chat and play pool and skittles.

The project is a collaboration between the King's Arms, the Okehampton Education Charity and Devon Councillor Christine March, who has used £500 from her locality budget towards new equipment.

Landlord Rob Bass said there was an Xbox which the young people could use and a big screen was being installed.

'We have been opening this room for about six weeks now and we have about nine kids coming along but we want to boost that number because we can probably take around sixty.

'It's been fairly low key so far and started in the summer holidays when a lot of people were away but now we really want to make it known that we are here.'

The youth café is being supervised by Mark Annear who used to run an under 18s disco in the town. It is currently open from 5pm to 8pm on Mondays and Thursdays and 5pm to 9pm on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays.

Mr Bass said: 'The young people were saying that they had nowhere to go where they were not being told what to do.

'Mark will be there to keep an eye on things but it's basically a safe place where they can meet up. We would welcome suggestions about things we can do there. If they want a disco or whatever they can let us know because it is their space.'

Mr Bass added that they would be fundraising in the future and grants were being sought to make the café self-sustaining and adding more equipment if that was what the youngsters wanted.

Cllr Christine Marsh said lots of young people had talked to her about wanting a place to socialise or just sit and have a coffee.

'The most common denominator in all this is music. Everybody seems to want music at the café so we are trying to give them what they want. Providing a place for them to go is the first step and hopefully we can build on this in the future.

'The games room at the King's Arms has been underused but they do run skittles events at weekends. It would be nice if we could get the youngsters competing against the league teams.'