AN UNLICENSED tattooist who sparked a borough-wide health alert after using dirty needles on children has walked free from court with a £250 fine.

Nigel Wilde, 36, was charged with two counts of failing to protect the safety of his customers, some of them children, after operating an unlicensed tattoo parlour from his filthy flat on Alderley Terrace, Dukinfield.

Wilde was fined £250 — £125 for each charge — at Manchester Crown Court after pleading guilty at a previous hearing in November. On benefits, he was ordered to pay £5 a week and will have cleared the fine in less than a year.

Judge Jeffrey Lewis heard that Wilde had used dirty needles and unsterilsed inks on people and had attempted to sterilise his own equipment using a baby’s bottle cleaner, which was insufficient to destroy blood-borne viruses such as HIV. Witnesses also claim that Wilde smoked while tattooing, drew outlines on to skin in pen, failed to wear disposable gloves and failed to wash his hands.

When inspectors raided his flat, they found a tattoo needle embedded in the carpet, filthy and ink-stained surfaces, and just one bar of cracked soap in a dirty sink for washing hands.

More than 150 people came forward after a helpline was set up to identify those tattooed by Wilde — at least five of them were children. Those affected were given blood tests and results showed that no one had contracted blood-borne infections from their tattoos.

Judge Lewis told Wilde he would have imposed a fine of up to £20,000 had he had the means to pay.

Ian Saxon, head of licensing and enforcement at Tameside Council, which brought the prosecution against Wilde said: "Today was a culmination of 18 months work which was totally unavoidable and was undertaken not only by officers from our environmental health team but an investigation that involved many organisations such as the Health Protection Agency, the Primary Care Trust and many local schools.

"Nigel Wilde was not registered with the local authority as a tattooist and operated in such a way that he put a large number of people including school children at risk."

Stacey Starowojtow was just 16 when she was tattooed by Wilde. Her mother, Sharon, said she was ‘disgusted’ by the sentence.

"He should have got a custodial sentence. This guy has put lives at risk," she said."I’m disgusted by it. Having to pay £5 a week — it’s not going to stop him from doing it again, it’s no deterrent. People are going to think they can get away with it."