A MAN has been handed the longest summer riots sentence yet as he was jailed for nine years today.

Painter and decorator Tom Birley, 27, helped fuel a fire outside a hotel housing hundreds of asylum-seekers and attacked police with missiles during rioting in Rotherham.

The prison sentence is the longest so far given to a defendant arrested following the violence which erupted in many towns and cities in early August.

Sheffield Crown Court heard how Birley, of Rowms Lane, Swinton, Rotherham, was involved in many of the worst incidents outside the Holiday Inn Express in the Manvers area of the town on August 4.

They included adding wood to a fire in the large industrial bin which had been pushed against an exit and helping place a further bin on top of the one ablaze.

The Recorder of Sheffield, Judge Jeremy Richardson KC, heard how 22 staff in the hotel barricaded themselves into the hotel’s panic room with freezers and “thought they were going to burn to death” as smoke filtered through the building.

More than 200 asylum-seekers were trapped inside the building and the judge heard how automated fire alarms told them to leave but they were trapped inside.

He said the case was “unquestionably” one of the most serious of the dozens he has dealt with in the last month.

“The disorder was racist and extremely frightening for anyone who was there,” he said.

“It was perpetrated by an ignorant mob of which you were part.”

The defendant became the first person to be sentenced for arson with intent to endanger life following the 12 hours of violence which left 64 police officers, three horses and a dog injured.