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Discharged over bizarre set of events
Page 27
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MI A Penrith recovery vehicle operator was given an absolute discharge by the town's magistrates after admitting using a recovery vehicle to carry a caravan without the authority of an Operator's Licence.
Senior traffic examiner Keith Smith said that in April a 7.5tonne recovery vehicle belonging to Ullswater Road Body Repairs was stopped in a check on the A74 at Harker. The vehicle was carrying an ABI Superstar caravan. No 0-licence identity disc was being displayed. Further inquiries established that the company did hold an 0-licence, but it authorised another vehicle and there was no margin for increase.
Defending, Chris Butterfield said that while commonsense and justice suggested that the company should be acquitted, the law required a guilty plea. Although a recovery vehicle was exempt from 0-licensing, it was only defined as a recovery vehicle if it was recovering a disabled vehicle that was mechanically propelled.
Describing the result as bizarre, Butterfield pointed out that no offence would have been committed if the vehi cle had been recovering a disabled motor caravan, or indeed two such caravans, nor if a damaged trailer caravan had been recovered together with its disabled tow ing vehicle. There was a greater irony in the present case in the fact that the company did actually have an Operator's Licence, although not for the vehicle in question, so it clearly met the various requirements for such a licence to be granted.
The magistrates ordered the company to pay £55 costs.