Health and safety worries stopped staff installing curfew equipment into Fenland man’s cabin home

MAGISTRATES decided to scrap a man’s curfew order after hearing that a monitoring company had refused to climb up a ladder to instal the necessary equipment into his cabin home.

Peter Horne - who is employed as a watchman and lives at a recycling depot - was given the three month curfew order as part of a suspended jail sentence last month.

Solicitor Roger Glazebrook told Fenland magistrates: “The area to be covered by the electronic equipment is too big.

“Staff have tried to go to the cabin, it is up in the air, they did not want to go up a ladder, because of health and safety.

“So the curfew has not been monitored, but he has still done it, whether it was electronically monitored or not. He has done three weeks of the curfew.”

The monitoring company, Serco, applied to the court to amend the 10pm to 6am order, because monitoring equipment could not be installed.

Horne, 50, of The Cabin, Recycling Depot, Boleness Road, Wisbech, was given his original three month jail sentence, suspended for two years, for an offence of assault, back in May 2009.

Mr Glazebrook said Horne was employed 24 hours a day, seven days a week, at the depot, and lives in two cabins.

Horne’s boss told the court: “We have had no robberies since he has been there.”

After hearing that Horne had already completed a domestic abuse programme, the magistrates agreed to wipe out his remaining curfew period.