COLLEGE bosses in Burnley have been fined £20,000 after a technician broke his back while trying to clean an air filter at the Princess Way campus.

Marcantonio Albanese, 63, was seriously injured in a fall caused when he overbalanced while attempting maintenance at Burnley College.

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Mr Albanese had his right foot on the top rung of stepladder and his left foot on the top of a filing cabinet in order to reach the filter, Preston Crown Court was told.

When the ladder toppled over, he fell sideways, hitting a bench on his way to the floor, breaking his back in several places and his breastbone.

The engineering technician, who was off work for five-and-a-half months, is expected to require painkillers for the rest of his life and has had to give up fell-walking and DIY, which he carried out for his 85-year-old mother.

Health and Safety Executive inspectors heavily criticised the college — which specialises in teaching health and safety courses. Speaking after the hearing, Rose Leese-Weller, a HSE inspector, said: “It’s astonishing that Burnley College failed to ensure basic health and safety systems were in place when it employs lecturers who specialise in this area.

“Anyone with even the slightest knowledge of safety while working at height would have known straddling a cabinet and the top rung of a stepladder was dangerous, but this practice was allowed to continue by the college.”

The court heard that an extraction system was fitted at short notice after the college secured a contract to teach 300 aerospace workers, with the course involving working with carbon fibre sheets.

But the unit was installed in a narrow gap between a cabinet and workbench. The technician’s manager had seen him carrying out similar cleaning a week before the incident in May last year and not intervened.

Burnley College admitted breaching the Health and Safety at Work Act and, as well as the fine, was ordered to pay £7,610 costs and a £120 victim surcharge.

The college was unavailable to comment.