£3,000 load taken off fine
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• Fines totalling £9,000 imposed on Alan Price & Sons (Bargoed) for six overload'ng offences have been reduced to £6,000 on appeal at Cardiff Crown Court.
The company had been fined £1,500 per offence with £325 costs after pleading guilty to the offences before Caerphilly Magistrates at the end of July.
The company had asked for a further 89 similar offences to be taken into consideration.
The court was told that the offences came to light following a retrospective check by trading standards officers on weight tickets at the weighbridge at the Trecatti landfill site. For the company, Jonathan Lawton said that as the delivery point was the closest to which the material being carried could be off-loaded, it would in fact have had a defence. The company was unable to off-load at the loading point when a vehicle was found to be too heavy because the weighbridge was on a singletrack road and there was a no-reversing policy in force.
He pointed out that 22 of the offences related to overloads of less than 5°0, or one tonne, which in any event would not have been prosecuted.
Cutting the fines to £1,000 per offence, Mr Justice Garland said that once the company knew vehicles were being overloaded, it should have instructed the grab operator to load one grabfull less.