A PUB in a leafy Preston village is competing with city centre sex haunts to pull in the punters.

But the move to hire topless bar staff at The Mill Tavern, Higher Walton, has angered local parents who say their children are faced with lurid 'sex' messages on their way to school.

Licensee Corinne Begwell, 25, and husband Dave, 37, hire the girls from an agency to work on Thursday and Friday nights. Wearing nothing from the waist up, the girls pull pints and chat to customers.

The topless trade is advertised on pavement blackboards near a bus stop outside the Cann Bridge Street boozer and on posters in the windows.

Mother-of-four Carole Whittle, who lives nearby in Bannister Hall Drive, said: "It's a disgrace. My children were asking me what a topless barmaid was.

"It's not the kind of thing I want to explain to them as they don't understand. We moved here to get away from things like this.

"It's a very small village and I really don't think it's good for the community. We are not closed minded, but Higher Walton isn't the place for this."

Grandmother Heather Calderbank, of Higher Walton Road, who has lived in the village all her life, said: "My daughter lives across from the pub and has four children. I know she isn't happy about it."

Clergymen in the area have also slammed the licensee's new fetish -- launched about nine weeks ago -- claiming it is a slur on women. "I think it's a terrible insult to women," said Father John Cribben, of Our Lady and St Patrick's RC Church, Higher Walton Road.

And Reverend Simon Hunt of All Saints CofE Church, Blackburn Road, said: "This doesn't fit with the character of Higher Walton. Everyone in the village from the age of six up now knows about it and it's upset many parents."

Mrs Begwell, a mother-of-two, moved from a Manchester ale-house nine months ago where, she claims, topless girls were popular.

And she says she has had no complaints from customers at her Higher Walton watering hole either. "They like it," she said. "And that goes for the women too."

A spokeswoman from South Ribble Borough Council said they wrote to the Mrs Begwell requesting she makes the public aware of the topless nights and that the girls could not be seen from the street.

But the pub does not need any special licence to employ topless women to work behind the bar.

The council spokeswoman added: "Under the Local Government Act the licensee must apply for a public entertainment licence from the council if the girls are stripping."

And she said the reason for the licence is not for stripping but for dancing.

A spokesman from the police licensing department said: "We are monitoring the situation."