A 14-YEAR-OLD boy has been given a three-month curfew after starting a fire that badly damaged a classroom of a west Suffolk school.

Colin Adwent

A 14-YEAR-OLD boy has been given a three-month curfew after starting a fire that badly damaged a classroom of a west Suffolk school.

In addition to arson, the teenage crimewave also asked for 16 other offences to be taken into consideration when he was sentenced at Bury St Edmunds youth court.

He had previously admitted the arson charge relating to a music classroom at Great Cornard Upper School.

Magistrates ordered the boy, who can not be named due to his age, to be electronically tagged and put him under a curfew until November.

He must remain at an address in the Sudbury area between 8pm and 7am each day from now until then.

The teenager was also given a 24-month supervision order and a 20-hour reparation order as part of his punishment.

The fire was lit in bins outside the music block of Great Cornard School, near Sudbury, just before 4pm on Boxing Day last year.

In the aftermath of the blaze police said it was a serious incident and the school could have been destroyed.

Two fire crews were called from Sudbury and one crew from nearby Long Melford after a member of staff spotted smoke rising above the school and technology college.

There were also reports of a figure seen near the music department's steps shortly before the emergency services arrived.

When they did fire crews found a wooden bin shed against the school's music department ablaze, scorching the exterior of the main buildings and involving electric cables inside the structure.

Shortly after the fire Peter Beer, chairman of Great Cornard Parish Council, condemned whoever had set the blaze.

He said: “It is terrible someone would do something like this.

“We don't have much of this sort of thing in Great Cornard and I hope the person responsible is caught.

“If it had been worse it could have caused big problems locally”