Red tape is threatening to stop Keighley boy Thomas Charnock working with his dad.

The 16-year-old Bingley Grammar School student has been told by bureaucrats that he must hang up his apron at Charnocks Butchers in Bradford.

His dad Allan, 54, has been ordered to sack the lad from the family business in The Oastler Centre.

Education Bradford says Mr Charnock is breaching Bradford council bylaws on the employment of school-age children in areas connected with the butchery of livestock.

Mr Charnock, of Stonehaven Court, Keighley, has branded the action "heavy handed."

And Thomas has written a letter to Education Bradford bosses pleading with them to have a change of heart.

Mr Charnock said: "As long as I can remember, over the last 35 years, there have been butcher's boys working after school and on Saturdays.

"Thomas is very proficient - I have every confidence in him - he has grown up with the business.

"He has been working with us since he was 14. His sisters, who are now 24 and 21, also worked with us.

"Thomas felt very strongly about this and decided to write to Education Bradford and tell his side of things."

In his letter, Thomas says that while he appreciates the need to watch out for child employment abuses, he asks for a common sense approach.

"I suppose, if I wasn't working on Saturday, I could legally be doing other useful things like riding a motor-bike around the streets, joining the armed forces, getting married and starting a family, consent to a homosexual relationship, or just hanging around outside our local off-licence, bumming cigarettes off people."

He writes: "Will I have to cease using saws, chisels, craft-knives, hot soldering irons during school technology lessons for the same reason?

"Will I have to hold my mother's hand when crossing the roads?"

A spokesman for Education Bradford said it was involved in a series of checks on traders who employ young people and the first round involved shops, market traders and newsagents.

"Checks are made from time to time to make sure traders are upholding the law and Bradford Council bylaws on the employment of school age children," he said. Bradford council's bylaw on the employment of school age children states that no child may be employed in any slaughterhouse or in that part of any butcher's shop or any premises connected with the killing of livestock, butchery or in the preparation of carcasses or meat for sale.