A "REVOLUTIONARY" new treatment for hirsute women has landed its distributor with a £20,000 fine.

Teesside Crown Court fined the company after hearing how the Epil 2000 system failed to remove a Cleveland woman's unwanted hair - despite 12 costly sessions at a treatment centre.

Yesterday Middlesbrough Borough Council's head of Trading Standards, John Wells, praised the customer who had overcome her embarrassment to report the treatment's shortcomings.

Mr Wells was speaking after a hearing at Teesside Crown Court in which the Midlands beauty product distribution company of Belle Sante UK pleaded guilty to two charges relating to both the machine and its literature's false claims.

Prosecuting counsel Jonathan Walker told Judge Tony Briggs how a woman complained to Middlesbrough's Trading Standards office after 12 sessions had failed to permanently remove unwanted hair.

The court was also told that experts in the field had also given their opinion that the Epil 2000 machine would not permanently remove hair.

After the matter had been reported, Mr Walker said that literature accompanying the equipment had been altered to read "progressive" hair loss rather than "permanent".

Five hundred of the £4,000 machines were sold to 125 salons, but were no longer available.

The system used no needles, just a "bio-active gel" (containing natural plant products and essentials) and a high frequency current.

According to the manufacturer, Epil 2000 works by emitting a high frequency current through the gel. The high frequency current carries the "bio-active" product from the conductive gel into the follicle - destroying the hair.

Barrister Darren Whitehead, defending Belle Sante and managing director Roy Cowley, told Judge Briggs how the machine's manufacturer Micro Technology International had already been prosecuted for the offences in a magistrates court and fined the maximum £5,000.

He said Belle Sante, which had originally elected to go to crown court for trial and had later admitted the charges, had been in the beauty product distribution business for more than ten years and had never encountered any difficulties of this kind before.

Fining the company £10,000 on each charge and ordering it to pay costs totalling £8,130, Judge Briggs said that adequate tests had not been carried out on the machines and salons and customers had been misled