Mechanic who tested police sirens for 30 years is awarded £16,000 - because they made him deaf

A police car mechanic has been awarded more than £16,000 in damages after his job testing emergency sirens made him deaf.

Kevin Twigg, 64, spent more than 30 years based at a garage in Hazel Grove, Stockport, where he worked on police cars for the Cheshire and Greater Manchester forces.

Whenever a vehicle came in for a service, he was required to turn on the sirens for several minutes and fix or re-tune them if they were malfunctioning.

Twigg was also given boxes of up to 30 sirens and asked to test them all to ensure they were all in working order. 

A civil court in Manchester was told that the noise created by the sirens was between 106 to 118 decibels, well above the 85 decibel limit recommended under workplace health and safety regulations.

He began to suffer problems with tinnitus after he retired in 1999 and doctors said he now has 'severe' hearing loss.

Twigg told the court: "It is like when you put a shell to your ear when you were a child and said you could hear the sea."

Recorder Tania Griffiths QC ruled that his deafness had been caused by exposure to excessive noise, which constituted "a breach of the duty of care" on behalf of his employers.

Twigg was awarded £16,074 and court costs. The amount of costs has not yet been determined but it is expected to run to around £50,000.

He started working at the police garage in Buxton Road in 1964 when it was attached to Cheshire force. He remained working there after the garage was amalgamated into the Greater Manchester Police force in 1974.

Twigg said the sirens would sound regularly throughout the day as he and his colleagues tested police cars. A workmate described the noise levels as 'unbearable' at times and said mechanics would shout at each other to turn the sirens off.

Police officers would often put the sirens on as a joke to signal their arrival in the garage, it emerged in court.

Twigg said that after many years of working without ear protection he had been given a pair of earmuffs, but no-one wore them and no-one was given instruction on how or when to use them.

He had not seen a memo sent out in 1990 urging mechanics to use ear protection and not to test the sirens inside the garage.

Twigg said his hearing loss had impacted on his social and family life, making him withdraw into himself because he was embarrassed by not being able to hear what people were saying properly.

The retired dad-of-two, who relies on digital hearing aids in both ears, said he was pleased at the result of the court case.

He said: "I intend to use the money to buy a new pair of hearing aids which fit inside my ears rather than outside." 

A police spokesman said: "This claim relates to employment dating back to 1965 and health and safety within the force has improved significantly since then."