A MAN flouted a police order to leave York city centre by heading straight for the nearest pub, the city’s magistrates heard.

Paul Spencer, 45, was told by police to get outside the city walls and stay outside for the next eight hours at 5.40pm on February 16, said Kathryn Reeve, prosecuting.

They had seen him outside a nightclub where there had been a report of a fight, the court heard.

At 10.16pm the same evening, officers found Spencer inside the city walls near a pub in Market Street and arrested him.

Asked by magistrates what he had done after the police told him to leave, he said: “I went straight to the pub.”

They fined him £50, plus £85 prosecution costs and a £20 statutory surcharge.

Spencer, of Water Lane, York, pleaded guilty to failing to obey a police order to leave an area.