A WOMAN lost the tips of two fingers on a guillotine blade because her employer did not provide adequate safety measures, magistrates heard yesterday.

Ohmega Electronic Products, of Bishop Auckland, County Durham, pleaded guilty to failing to ensure that effective safety measures were taken and failing to carry out a risk assessment.

Carol Kavanagh worked for the firm for more than five years before the accident, in which the tips of her left middle and index fingers were severed.

She had been elsewhere in the factory and approached the machine to get some more plastic tubing to continue her work, the court was told.

Due to static electricity, the tubing collected in a chute, so Ms Kavanagh reached inside to free the machine, catching the two guillotine blades, which worked at 100 strokes per minute, with her fingers.

David Shallow, of the Health and Safety Executive, said: "The guillotine is a very dangerous piece of equipment and two plastic guards, which have since been fitted, should have already been in place to prevent this accident."

Corin Furness, representing the company, said that because Ms Kavanagh did manual work with electrical wires and had not used the tube cutting machine there was no reason to suspect this accident would happen.

He said the staff who did use the machine were fully trained and knew the dangers, so would not put their hand inside it.

He said: "This company has an outstanding record.

"Since 1986 there has been just one other accident and that was when someone fainted and hurt themselves when they fell."

After hearing that the firm, which employees 65 people, was struggling financially, magistrates fined it £250 for each offence and ordered it to pay costs of £720.