Violent incidents at late-night town centre bars have dramatically dropped during the past year, new figures show.

Police say an increased presence during Friday and Saturday evenings – and new powers – have helped slash offences ranging from theft to violence.

At four popular town centre bars there were 51 police call-outs for violence from January 2009 to November 2009 – but that dropped to just seven from November 2009 to Novem-ber 2010.

And the total call-outs for officers plummeted from 134 incidents to 40 by November 2010 at the same bars.

Inspector Jez Taylor, head of Macclesfield Neighbourhood Policing Team, said there had been a ‘concerted effort’ to clamp down on bad behaviour.

He added: "We have put a lot of hard work into the town centre over the last nine to 10 months so I’m pleased it’s paid off.

"I think it reflects well on the high-visibility patrols in the town centre. It’s simple: if there are more yellow jackets of officers in the town centre people will see them and incidents will drop."

One of main weapons in the police’s arsenal is a direction to leave notice as brought in by the Violent Crime Reduction Act 2006. It can stop people, aged 10 and above, from re-entering an area for up to two days and has been hailed a success.

Insp Taylor added: "There has been a concerted effort from ourselves and Pubwatch in the past 10 months. We can now issue directions to leave if someone is acting like an idiot. We can ask them to leave the town centre and if they return within 12 hours they’ll get arrested.

"They've been used very effectively.

"It can be very useful rather than arresting them and taking two officers off the street while they drive them to Middlewich (custody suite) to charge them for drunk and disorderly. Yes, sometimes they do get arrested, but we can give them an opportunity to leave and they do most of the time."

The figures were obtained by the Express after lodging a Freedom of Information request with Cheshire Constabulary and relate to calls to or in the vicinity of pubs and bars, and can include non-criminal incidents such as lost property, traffic crashes or false alarms.