A businessman has been ordered to pay fines and costs of £41,000 for breaches of fire safety regulations after a blaze swept through a Bradford mill complex.

More than 50 firefighters were called to Barkerend Mills in October last year and at one stage a 200-metre exclusion zone was set up because acetylene cylinders were found in the basement.

One of Peter Hemingway’s female employees went back into the premises to warn a colleague and a visitor because there was no fire alarm sounding. Prosecutor Stephen Brown told Bradford Crown Court: “She returned to the second floor to warn them and by this time the smoke had reached the first-floor level.’’ The cause of the blaze, which started in the basement, is still unknown, but an investigation revealed a series of breaches of fire safety regulations.

It emerged yesterday that since August 2002 the West Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Authority had been raising concerns with Hemingway, 50, about the safety of the premises where he operated pet products business Aquarline.

Mr Brown told Judge Jonathan Durham Hall QC the authority had served a series of enforcement notices on Hemingway between 2002 and 2005, but in the wake of the fire breaches of the regulations were again uncovered.

Hemingway, of Leaventhorpe Hall, Newsam Green, Leeds, pleaded guilty in October this year to seven breaches relating to a variety of failures.

They included failure to ensure emergency exits were kept clear, failure to ensure emergency exits were not locked, failure to take fire precautions to ensure the safety of employees and failure to ensure that facilities, equipment and devices were maintained.

Hemingway, who had previous convictions relating to animal cruelty, was abroad on the day of the fire.

His barrister Ian Howard said that since the blaze Hemingway had gone on a health and safety course and had continued to carry out improvement work at the premises which he was already undertaking at the time of the fire.

Judge Durham Hall told Hemingway that if the employee had not gone back into the premises there was a question mark over whether the others on the second floor would have had time to exit before succumbing to the smoke and flames. He said the breaches viewed individually were damning, but together they were utterly lamentable.

The judge imposed fines totalling £31,000 and ordered Hemingway to pay a further £10,000 in costs. He will have to pay the money within a year or face a possible 18 months in jail.