Caught out by changed law
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• A Guildford waste disposal company and one of its drivers were given absolute discharges after Bedford magistrates were told that breaches of the EC drivers hours' regulations had occurred because the company had been unaware of a change in the law.
Driver Ian Floodgate pleaded guilty to four offences of driving for more than 4.5 hours without taking the required 45.minute break and Chambers Waste Management admitted permitting the offences, Prosecuting for the Vehicle Inspectorate, John Rose said the offences came to light when Floodgate's vehicle was checked at the Brogborough tip in February. When interviewed, managing director Peter Chambers said the company's drivers had been working in accordance with the domestic drivers' hours rules.
He had said he had believed that they qualified for the exemption from the EC Regulations for vehicles engaged on refuse collection and disposal. But after Fiimigate had been stopped he had immediately contacted the Department of Transport and been told of a 1996 European Court decision which had led to a change in the law,
Defending, Chris Butterfield argued that the company had acted quite properly in adopting the interpretation of the EC Regulations applied in the 1991 case of DPP vs Ryan in which the High Court had ruled that the exemption applied to private contractors as well as to public bodies.
However, said Butterfield, in 1996 the High Court decision in
the case of Swain vs McCaul and the European Court's judgements in the cases of Mrozek and Jager and Goupil. It made it clear that the exemption applied only to vehicles used for the collection and transport of waste over short distances—as a general service in the public interest provided by public authorities or by undertakings under their control—as opposed to commercial services such as those of Chambers Waste Management.
As those cases had not been reported until after the commission of these offences, the company could not have known of the change in the law and was therefore morally blameless.
The magistrates ordered the company to pay £1 0 0 towards the costs of the prosecution and Floodgate £55.