EAST Lancashire companies have been fined a total of nearly £500,000 over the last financial year for health and safety breaches.

The companies were named and shamed on the Health and Safety Executive's website today as it launched its fifth annual offences and penalties report.

This year's figures make the North West the second highest region in the country for convictions, behind the West Midlands.

The report shows that 158 companies were prosecuted, being fined an average of £11,032 - a reduction on last year, when 209 companies were prosecuted with an average fine of £3,805.

Forty-two companies in East Lancashire were fined a total of £485,000.

Only London and Wales had higher average fines.

The offences date back over several years but are for prosecutions which were successful in the 2003/04 financial year.

In Blackburn, 11 firms were fined a total of £78,500. An employee was killed at Shirley's, Canterbury Street, in August 1999 after being run over by a fork lift truck.

A worker at Sappi Europe, Blackburn Mill, Feniscowles, had eight fingers amputated under a guillotine in an accident in May 1999.

In Hyndburn, E&W Threlfall, Holt Lane, Rishton, was fined £3,500 after a 15-year-old trapper was hit in the eye with a shotgun pellet while working at a clay pigeon shoot in June 2001.

In Burnley, nine companies were hit with fines totalling £273,000. A worker was crushed in February 1999 when a dumper overturned at Thursdon Valley Picnic Area, Maliff Road, Briercliffe, with Lancashire County Engineering Services fined £100,000 and Able Tool and Plant Hire £3,000.

Eaton Engineering was fined £30,000 after an employee at Peel Mill, in Gannow Lane, was killed by a falling electrical control panel in February 2001.

Smurfit UK was fined £100,000 following the death of an employee who was dragged into machinery at the paper mill on Ashfield Road, Calder Vale in January 2000.

In Accrington, nine companies were fined at total of £48,500. In Clitheroe, four firms were fined £22,000 and in Darwen four firms were fined £15,000.

HSE Director General Timothy Walker said: "Until every employee in Great Britain works in a healthy and safe environment, there will be a continued need for HSE to use fair, reasoned and sensible enforcement as a necessary and powerful tool in ensuring employers comply with the law."

The web-based report, available on www.hse.gov.uk, shows that prosecutions have increased by six per cent on last year.