Supermarket giant Tesco has been ordered to pay £40,000 in fines and costs after an employee had the tops of two of his fingers sliced off in a dough dividing machine.

The worker was injured after he put his hand into the faulty machine to clear away remaining dough at the city's store in St Oswald's Road.

Yesterday Tesco pleaded guilty to two charges under the Health and Safety at Work Act and the Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations at Cheltenham Magistrates Court.

The store admitted it had failed to maintain a system of work and not provided effective measures to prevent access to a dangerous part of the dough divider and to stop movement of the dangerous part.

Representing Gloucester City Council, prosecutor Bernard Thorogood said the victim, Anthony Nyboer, was working in the in-store bakery when the accident happened on February 22 2007.

He explained how an interlocking switch on the dough dividing machine was supposed to operate so when the lid was down the machine was in operation and when it was lifted it stopped.

But this safety mechanism had stopped working which meant the machine continued to work even when the lid was open.

Mr Thorogood said the defendant had reached into the hopper and "lost the top part of two fingers on his right hand between the top joint and the knuckle".

"He said he pressed the red emergency stop button first (before he put his hand in the machine) but evidence proves this cannot be the case."

Mr Thorogood said in interview the victim had made the point that reaching in the machine was something he would normally do and that it had not been working well for the five months he'd been an employee at Tesco.

He said: "A couple of weeks before, the lid of the hopper had been tied down with a plastic bag to keep the interlock switch down."

The problem was reported to senior staff and three days earlier an engineer was called out to see the faulty machine.

Mr Thorogood said staff claimed they were told by the engineer the machine "was fine to use".

But this meant staff were having to press the emergency stop button while the safety mechanism wasn't working.

Defending Tesco, Simon Antrobus, said the company expressed remorse at the incident which contravened all its safety policies, and said it "should never have happened".

He said Tesco had a contract with external company Mono to maintain the machine and it had a duty to ensure any unsafe machine was taken out of use.

An engineer from Mono has since been disciplined by his employer and Mr Nyboer is still employed by Tesco.

Mr Antrobus said Tesco staff had since been retrained and the machine had been repaired.

Magistrates ruled Tesco's monitoring and maintenance had been insufficient but that other factors had played a part and the problem was not systemic to Tesco as a whole.

Tesco was fined £20,000 and ordered to pay £20,000 in costs as well as a £15 victim surcharge.

Speaking after the case a spokeswoman for Gloucester City Council said: "We are pleased at the level of the fines as they reflect the seriousness of the injuries sustained."

A spokesman for Tesco said: "We very much regret what happened and have taken steps to ensure there is no repeat."