PLAIN-clothed officers are to patrol a town centre leisure complex in a bid to thwart groups of badly-behaved youths.

Operation Pin Strike will be carried out throughout the school summer holidays and will target youths causing a nuisance around Accrington Superbowl, Vue cinema and McDonald's.

PC Steve Hilton said young people were congregating in the car park and people using the facilities were finding their anti-social behaviour intimidating.

He said young lads in cars had also been using the car park as a race track.

PC Hilton said: "The cinema and the Superbowl have already started to provide private security at the weekends to tackle some of the problems, but we are planning to give the area a lot more attention over the summer holidays.

"This will include more high-visibility policing, but also having plain-clothes officers around at various times and the road policing unit dealing with incidents on the car park.

"We will be taking action against anyone committing offences."

Toni Carroll, general manager of the Vue cinema, said: "We have got groups of young kids congregating mainly around the doors.

"They are causing a nuisance because they are in the way and they are using bad language and acting in an anti-social way.

"It is really off-putting for the people who want to come along to the cinema to enjoy themselves.

"I think the police intervention is going to be fantastic -- it has got the support of us, the Superbowl and McDonald's."

Emma Snape, duty manager at Superbowl, said: "We have had problems with big groups of young people vandalising the toilets and using foul language.

"It can put people off coming in, especially people with small children.

"Having more of a police presence over the summer will definitely help. The police have been very supportive."