A NORTH-EAST city hall may be forced to back down after trading standards officers seized three sets of weighing scales from a fruit and veg trader because he was selling in imperial measures, it emerged yesterday.

Sunderland City Council says it is reviewing procedures after seizing the scales from Steven Thorburn, who works in the city's Southwick Market.

Mr Thorburn, 36, and fishmonger Neil Herron, contacted the UK Independence Party to take up their case and the council now faces legal action unless Mr Thorburn is compensated and his scales returned.

Tony Bennett, solicitor and legal advisor to the UK Independence Party leader Geoffrey Titford MEP, said Sunderland City Council had acted unlawfully by seizing the scales.

He said: "We have a fund which runs to several thousand pounds that can be used to fight the council.

"Section one of the 1985 Weights and Measures Act states that traders are permitted to trade in either imperial or metric systems.

"Unless Mr Thorburn is compensated for loss of trade, refunded the money he spent on the new scales and has his old ones returned we will take this to the County Court."

Sunderland trading standards officers had told him they acted under a 1994 regulation added to the Weights and Measures Act which said all weights must be measured in metric after a certain date later set at January 1, 2000.

Mr Bennett said: "You can't contradict an act with a regulation. That is accepted law. The law of the land as far as this is concerned is still section one of the Weights and Measures Act."

Mr Thorburn, who has run Thorburn's Fruit and Veg stall for 12 years, was visited by police and trading standards officials who seized three imperial scales on Tuesday, leaving him with one metric set to serve customers.

Neil Herron, who runs Herron's Fish and Discount Shop in Sunderland's Park Lane Market, said: "I have received a 28-day warning from the council saying that I must use a metric system or else I will have the scales seized.

"The letter says that if I object I can be arrested for breach of the peace." Many traders had received the same letter and were "petrified", he added.

A spokesman for Sunderland City Council said: "The council is now reviewing the circumstances surrounding the case and will take no further action until the review is completed."

He declined to say if the scales would be returned to Mr Thorburn or whether compensation would be paid.

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