£29,000 fine thrown out
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• Bolton Crown Court has quashed the conviction of coach operator Smiths Shearings on 138 offences of failing to produce tachograph records. Last July Wigan Magistrates ordered the company to pay fines and costs totalling £29,100 (CM 20-26 July).
Evidence was given by traffic examiner Harry Buckley and PC Graham Robinson of Greater Manchester Police about checks on the firm's coaches at Cranage, Cheshire in June and July 1988. When the relevant tachograph charts were asked for, many were unavailable.
For Smiths Shearings, Mark
Laprelle argued that the prosecution had failed to show that the coaches were being operated by the company at the time; that they were being driven by Smiths Shearings employees; that tachographs were required on the journeys in question; that drivers had completed tachograph charts and handed them in — or that
the traffic examiner was authorised to take charts away.
Judge Robert Brown said that the prosecution had "bitten off more than it could chew". With no evidence to the contrary, he accepted that the coaches were driven by employees going about the company's business, and he rejected the argument that the traffic examiner was not authorised to remove the charts. But it was for the prosecution to prove the nature of the journeys, and whether it was necessary to use tachographs. For the prosecution to succeed, it had to show that a chart was required, had been made out and handed in.