A TEENAGER has been sentenced to three years in custody after throwing acid in the face of a relative.

The boy, who was 16 at the time and cannot be identified for legal reasons, concocted a substance from a number of household items including parts of a battery, and threw it in a 24-year-old man’s face outside a house in Brighton.

The victim required hospital treatment for burns suffered during the incident.

Several hundred pounds worth of damage was also caused to a car outside the house, for which he admitted a charge of criminal damage.

He received no separate penalty for this offence.

The boy, who was 16 at the time and cannot be identified for legal reasons, appeared at Brighton Magistrates' Court on Thursday 21 January.

The court heard that on August 18, he had thrown a substance into the face of a 24-year-old relative outside a house in Hollingdean, Brighton.

Now 17, the Brighton boy has been sentenced to three years in custody after he pleaded guilty to wounding with intent, having thrown a corrosive substance into the face of a relative in August.

The boy admitted that he had concocted the substance from a number of household items, including parts of a battery.

He also required hospital treatment for burns suffered during the incident.

Acid attacks have doubled in the space of a year in Sussex meaning there are more of the life-changing attacks happening in the county than in London.

Sussex Police dealt with the fifth-highest number of the serious assaults involving corrosive substances in the UK.

It statistically places the county above London, Manchester and Liverpool in terms of acid attacks for 2015.

People are using anything from de-icer to bleach to permanently scar victims.

A Sussex Police spokesperson said: "Acid attacks are particularly nasty and would be investigated by us as a serious assault. The circumstances, and the corrosive substances used, vary.

"Clearly eight offences like this are eight too many and we would treat these offences as seriously as we would with any other violent offence.

“In each case we would robustly investigate to bring those responsible to justice. In Crawley and Brighton we have charged three people in connection with attacks in August."

The Crawley incident refers to a 27-year-old who had acid thrown over him in a car park following a screening of cult biopic Straight Outta Compton.

The man was taken to hospital and treated for potentially life-changing injuries after the attack in Crawley Leisure Complex between 1am and 1.30am on Sunday August 30.

It is thought the incident may have started when the victim and another man, 29, were watching the film at Cineworld.

Detective Sergeant Laura Diamond, of Crawley CID said it was an isolated but nevertheless nasty and unprovoked assault.

A month later a Hastings man admitted carrying out an acid attack on the wrong victim leaving a father-of-one scarred for life in a case of mistaken identity.

Property developer Andreas Christopheros, 29, suffered a permanent loss of vision and horrific burns when David Phillips flung the corrosive material in his face.

Phillips, 48, attacked Andreas on his own doorstep after travelling more than 300 miles from his own home in Hastings to Cornwall and was given a life sentence.

Police said Mr Christopheros was not the intended victim and described it outside court as a revenge attack on the wrong man that was "ill-prepared and ill executed".

Sussex Police said eight assaults involving the use of acid or a corrosive or noxious substance were recorded between January and November 2015, up from four in 2014, three in 2013 and five in 2012.

There were nine female victims and 11 male victims.