A RADCLIFFE man has helped to overturn a ban on blind people serving as magistrates.

Mr Bill Kenton, aged 47, was one of six JPs selected to take part in a nationwide three-year pilot scheme to assess whether the blind and partially-sighted should sit on the Bench.

Now, following the lifting of the ban by the Lord Chancellor, Lord Irvine, he will become the first blind person in the North-west to be allowed to serve as a magistrate.

Mr Kenton, a former nurse at Bury's Florence Nightingale Hospital, said: "I applied to become a magistrate in the early 1990s but I was turned down."

In 1998, he was appointed as a Justice of the Peace when the pilot scheme began. For the past three years, he has been assessed to determine whether his performance was affected by his disability.

Mr Kenton will serve two days a month on the Manchester bench.

He said: "I was appointed when the ban was still in place. It was made clear, and we were certainly under the impression, that if for some reason we couldn't carry out our duties we were honour-bound to resign.

"I feel the fact that I'm blind has strengthened the bench from the point of view that it's now more representative by having someone who is disabled."