FINES of £14,000 imposed on an East Lancashire farmer over a shooting accident have been slashed to a quarter of the total on appeal.

Judge Peter Openshaw QC, sitting with two magistrates at a Preston Crown Court hearing, reduced the penalty to £3,500.

They thought the sentence imposed by Blackburn magistrates on Thomas Threlfall had been "grossly excessive and wrong in principle".

Several months ago, in a Health and Safety prosecution Threlfall was also ordered to pay £5,000 costs after pleading guilty to five offences.

The court case followed an accident at Holts Farm, Rishton where a 15-year-old boy was injured just below an eye during a clay pigeon shoot at a trophy shoot for experienced shots in June last year.

The teenager had been employed on a device which fired clays from a trap.

The court heard that the clay was incorrectly loaded into a trap after an inexperienced boy swapped places with a more experienced young person and the flightpath of some of the clays became erratic.

The boy heard a shot hit a shield in front of him and shouted for the shooting to be halted.

It seemed that no-one else heard him shout.

Clay pigeon shooting had been staged at the site for many years, without cause for concern, the court was told, but since the incident Mr Threlfall and his son had been on a training course.

The judge, after considering the appeal with the magistrates, said the fines were very many times above the annual profit of £3,500.

He also said "We have no doubt that he was doing what he then thought was his honest best to run a safe clay pigeon shoot."

The magistrates' order of £5,000 costs was reduced to £500.