A WORCESTER theme pub's continuing tussle with Trading Standards over the right to serve beer in metric measures has resumed after a month-long stand-off.

Two council officers yesterday visited Andrea Schutz and partner Anton Limlei, licensees of The Cardinal's Hat, in Friar Street, to see whether their illegal practice of serving beer in the litre and half-litre traditional Austrian flutes had stopped.

However, insisting their customers wanted a choice, and backed by Metric Martyrs and the British Weights & Measures Association, the landlords were unmoved.

"I cannot understand it. Beer is beer," Mr Limlei said.

"Surely there are more important things for the council to be dealing with," Ms Schutz added.

John Dell, Worcestershire Trading Standards divisional manager, acknowledged that laws on British measures were sometimes difficult to understand and enforce.

"Beer must be sold in pints," he said.

"But lager and lime, or shandy, must be sold in litres or glasses. We do not make the law."

Mr Dell, along with Trading Standards officer David Hough, remained adamant that the council had no desire to see prosecution or the successful business closed.

"We have never said that we will take action," he said.

However, David Delaney, a representative of the British Weights & Measures Association and a spokesperson for Liberty, a Human Rights Litigation Unit, thought the council was being over-zealous in their enforcement of minor laws.

"There has not been a prosecution for about two years now," he said.

"The rest of the country is backing off, so why is Worcestershire's Trading Standards keeping up the pressure?"

The landlords had heard nothing from the council since mid-October since being warned that serving their Austrian beer in litres was against the law.

But on Monday, a representative was sent to inform them two trading standards officers would arrive for an "informal chat".

"I thought we had heard the end of the situation," Ms Schutz said.