THE banning of a thousand Elgar Technology College students from a city store will cause eyebrows to rise across the Faithful City.

We must say, from the outset, that Lidl has every right to run its business how it sees fit.

But we also feel uneasy because the company's public relations policy - not to comment in public - means we're left drawing some conclusions of our own.

Headteacher Tony James is in a similar position. He's been told about discrepancies with the stock count at Lidl's Blackpole store, leaving him to infer that shoplifting's the problem.

Petty theft has been a part of school life for decades, of course. It's regarded by some as a kind of rite of passage.

It's not something we condone. No sensible person would. It's also hard to think that life will ever be different, but it must be tackled where it happens.

However, we have great sympathy with Elgar staff, students and parents over the impact of Lidl's move.

If some students have been caught - we don't know whether any have, and neither does the college - we'd have expected the police to be involved and the law to act.

But that hasn't happened.

As things stand, while the level of thefts might now fall, many innocent students are being tarred with a nasty brush - and the guilty few are free to take their sticky fingers elsewhere.

At the very least, a bowel-churning visit to the police station for a caution might have served everyone better.

We hope that a different kind of common sense will soon prevail.