A RETIRED publican is staging a one-man protest against council tax at his New Forest home.

Derek Reeves, former landlord at the Hare and Hounds pub in Durnstown, Sway, has failed in his bid to get his taxation band lowered.

Now the 70-year-old, who lives in a three-bedroom bungalow in Station Road with his wife Beryl, has put up a large sign in his garden so all can see what he thinks about the charges.

The sign, which covers the front of his summer house, reads: "Council tax for this OAP home is £1,400. Bureaucracy run amok".

Mr Reeves told the Daily Echo: "The reason I put the sign up is because I felt bloody-minded. It's only a small bungalow."

The pensioner had applied to have his council tax reduced from Band E following an informal chat with a member of staff from New Forest District Council. The application was turned down, however.

This year Mr Reeves will have to pay £1,414.23 - an increase of almost £78 on the previous financial year.

He said: "I can afford to pay it, but I don't want to pay it. Why should we, in the autumn of our lives, put up with this iniquitous tax?"

Sway district councillor, Tory Barry Rickman, who is also a member of the council's ruling Cabinet, said: "I sympathise with his view. I'm a great believer in freedom of speech but I feel there are other ways he could have expressed a view in the formal set-up."