POLICE have launched a poster campaign targeting a former Torquay 'house from hell' tenant who has been banned from the centre of Totnes.

Posters with pictures of 45-year-old Barry Griffiths have gone up across the town centre in Totnes explaining that he is barred from the area from noon to 6pm each day.

He has already been picked up by police for breaching the court order last month and given a suspended jail sentence by a district judge.

The decision to issue posters of Griffiths giving the detail of his anti-social behaviour order conditions is the first time the police have taken that sort of action in Totnes.

Neighbourhood beat officer for Totnes PC Mike Elliott explained: "By putting up the posters it enables us to monitor what this man is doing via the public.

"We have had several calls saying that he has been in the town from people who have read the posters.

"The problem that we have with asbos is controlling them once they have been issued. If the public is fully aware of these conditions then they can help."

Barry Griffiths, who was then living at Windmill Down Farm, Totnes, was labelled a jobless alcoholic and a nuisance street drinker, when he appeared before magistrates where the asbo was granted in November last year after the court heard that he was the subject of numerous complaints from shoppers, shopkeepers, residents and tourists over his drunken, abusive and aggressive manner and for fouling in public.

The asbo banned him from being in the town centre between noon and 6pm for two years.

The area he is barred from is bounded by Station Road, Coronation Road, the River Dart, St Peter's Quay, Moat Hill, Maudlin Road and the Western Bypass.

Griffiths was given the suspended prison sentence after he was found sleeping in a Totnes bus shelter inside the banned zone last month.

Later the same month he was banned from a house in Chelston in Torquay after police went to court to win a closure order effectively kicking out Griffiths and five other tenants after magistrates were told that their anti-social behaviour had undermined the fabric of the local community.

The Totnes posters have gone up in shop windows, church halls and other places where Griffiths might show up.