A FORMER York carriageworks employee who lost many ex-colleagues to deadly asbestos dust has handed over more than £2,500 to a support group that helps victims and their families.

Arnie Gomersall, of Burnholme Avenue, York, raised the funds through a sell-out benefit gig held last December at the Crescent Working Men’s Club, and featuring York-based Lynyrd Skynyrd tribute band, Aynt Skynyrd, in which Arnie plays drums.

Kim Daniells, founder and spokeswoman for the York Asbestos Support Group, praised Arnie’s “fantastic” achievement in raising the money.

She said members of the group would vote on how the money should be spent, but one option might be to help asbestos patients meet the costs of travelling for treatment.

Another option might be to help fund research into the asbestos-related disease mesothelioma.

She said the money was presented by Arnie at a reception attended by both the families of asbestos victims and a number of people suffering from the asbestos-related disease mesothelioma.

She said some of them were former employees of the carriageworks, where there was widespread exposure to asbestos over several decades. She said patients had very courageously talked about their experiences with other members of the group, which now had about 40 members.

Kim said that in the months ahead, the group would be monitoring an important legal test case with implications for asbestos victims in York.

A court hearing in Newcastle would look at whether people who had been diagnosed as having asbestosis, perhaps through a chest X-ray, but without so far suffering symptoms, should be entitled to compensation.

The case had similarities with one heard by the House of Lords last year, about whether compensation should be given to people with pleural plaques – scarring of the lungs caused by exposure to asbestos, which does not cause symptoms.

The Lords ruled against compensation for such people, a decision which the York support group is now campaigning against.