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Torched his own flat and landed council with £50,000 repair bill

Dale Sivewright
Dale Sivewright

A man who torched his own flat and landed his local authority with a £50,000 repair bill was jailed for nearly four years today.

Dale Sivewright deliberately started the fire at his Fraserburgh home in February this year.

He barricaded the door of his flat in the fishing town’s Barrasgate Road before setting alight “combustible items” and a sofa.

The blaze caused £53,000 of damage to the block of flats and took two hours for fire crews to bring under control.

Sivewright, who is currently in prison for another matter, admitted wilful fireraising when he appeared at the High Court in Glasgow earlier this year.

However, Judge Lord Burns deferred sentencing until today, when Sivewright – who also goes by the surname Stewart – appeared at the High Court in Aberdeen.

The court heard previously that the living room suffered the most damage in the fire but that other areas, including the kitchen, hallway and the close, were also badly affected.

Sivewright was the only person in the block at the time.

Fire investigators believe the blaze broke out at the sofa before spreading “rapidly” through the property.

Acting for the defence, solicitor advocate Shahid Latif said his client was experiencing personal issues when he decided to deliberately burn down his home on February 23.

Sivewright also pled guilty at an earlier hearing to brandishing a knife and uttering threats at his north-east home three days before he set the fire.

The court heard previously that police had found him on the roof of the block screaming that he was going to go “mental”.

Latif said that the 21-year-old was keen to get professional help in prison with his difficulties.

The solicitor advocate added: “He felt abandoned.

“He does not want his mother to see him drifting in and out of prison for the near future, which is what will happen if he does not address these issues.”

Lord Burns said given the gravity of the situation, Sivewright’s offending history and the scale of the damage caused in the fire he had no choice but to impose a prison sentence.

The judge said: “You’ve pled guilty to the two offences, each of which caused considerable expenditure of resources and was committed just a month after you were released from a sentence for similar offences.

“The second of these incidents was a very serious one which not only caused the deployment of the emergency services but also caused more than £50,000 worth of damage.”

Judge Burns sentenced Sivewright to three years and 10 months behind bars.

The sentence will start in February next year, on the date of his earliest release for his current spell behind bars.