Fined £12k over storage of fireworks

A company that stored fireworks in a dangerous manner has been fined £12,000.

Medway magistrates were told last year while trading as Sparkles Fireworks, the business Hardy and Hardy, set up at a garden centre in Maidstone despite not being registered.

Fireworks on the shop floor were stored with bottles of fuel and some were loose on a workbench or in open boxes.

The firm, in High Street, Newington, owned a container in a Sittingbourne car park, which was licensed to store 25kg net explosive content (NEC) of fireworks.

The court heard when KCC Trading Standards opened it, it contained 30kg of NEC, with fireworks stored in a manner not complying with the licence.

A van parked nearby contained almost 45kg of NEC – made up of normal garden fireworks and the more powerful type.

Vehicles can only contain fireworks when transporting them.

Magistrates ruled the company fell short of the appropriate standards, but took into account its early guilty plea and that there were no previous convictions, fining the firm and ordering it to pay prosecution costs. A drug-dealing clubber was arrested after he took the “bizarre” decision to refuse the offer of an amnesty by security staff, a court heard.

Jordan West was told the police would not be called if he handed over the 64 ecstasy tablets he had at The Source Bar in Rose Yard, Maidstone.

The town’s crown court was told the 24-year-old roofer, who would also have been barred, declined because he needed the drugs.

Judge Julian Smith told West, of Leicester Road, Shepway: “This case comes before the court as a result of your rather bizarre rejection of a relatively generous offer on the part of security staff.”

But he escaped being locked up after the judge decided his rehabilitation was “well in hand”.

He was sentenced to 21 months