A CAR worker was today awaiting sentence for starting a £431,000 blaze at a telephone exchange which left hundreds of North Yorkshire BT customers cut off.

Arsonist Martin Steven Pattison, aged 20, also pleaded guilty to an £11,000 blaze at Monk Fryston Football Club on the same night as the fire at Gateforth BT exchange, and a series of car fires in the Selby area over several months.

Judge Jonathan Crabtree told him: "Inevitably, everyone is concerned to know if you are a long-standing menace as regards to arson. That is what people are worried about."

Earlier the judge had said: "I don't understand how he came to be given bail on charges as serious as these."

He ordered two psychiatrists to prepare reports on Pattison's mental state and released him on bail with a 8pm to 7am curfew and a residency condition.

"You really ought to make your arrangements on the likelihood you will find yourself being sent away," the judge told the arsonist.

Pattison, who works for an Elvington car firm and lives at Pasture Close, Wistow, Selby, will return to York Crown Court for sentence in a few weeks' time. He pleaded guilty to nine charges of arson, including causing £431,400 damage at the telephone exchange and £11,755 at Monk Fryston Football Club on Saturday, January 27, and damaging by fire a Ford Fiesta in Sherburn Industrial Estate, two cars in Wistow on separate dates, one in Selby, one on the B1222 at Stillingfleet, one at Drax and one at the A63/A1 Selby Fork junction.

The prosecution and the defence disagree on the possible involvement of other people in some of the car fires.

Hundreds of BT customers in Gateforth, Hambleton and Birkin were cut off after the telephone exchange blaze and BT had to use a mobile exchange until the building was rebuilt. While the phones were down, police, firefighters and paramedics were on standby in the area to respond to any emergencies.

Updated: 10:32 Saturday, June 23, 2001