A CALL is being made for the Government to ban children from having fireworks.

Councillor Tom Mawston, leader of the Liberal Democrat group on Middlesbrough Council, is urging all councillors to back a motion before next week's full council meeting, appealing to the Government to make it an offence for children under 16 to possess fireworks.

His move follows a record 40 per cent increase in firework injuries in Britain last year. Figures show 1,362 people were injured by fireworks in the four weeks before Bonfire Night, 2001.

Middlesbrough Council, like its neighbour Redcar and Cleveland, has introduced codes of practice with shop- keepers governing the sale of fireworks.

Coun Mawston said: "This shocking level of firework injuries points to a breakdown in the current voluntary controls over the supply and use of fireworks.

"It is time for the Government to introduce tougher, compulsory, controls over the sale and use of fireworks.''

"The Government can, and must, do much more to protect the community from dangerous and excessively noisy fireworks. In Middlesbrough, it is becoming an almost year round problem."

Middlesbrough Council this year introduced a confidential telephone hotline for residents to report firework nuisance and have ruled that tenants caught selling fireworks from their homes will be evicted.

The firework manufacturing industry recently assured the council that November 5 and the run-up to it next year will be quieter by 30 million loud bangs.

From January 1, members of the British Firework Association will no longer manufacture loud, exploding single-tube air bombs or small whistle-bang rockets