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They call this enforcement?
Page 66
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Jason Hamer asks how much time and money can be wasted
by incompetent enforcement.
Erm... quite a lot it would seem.
Iam sure there are many people out there who operate the same kind of mail in-tray that I do. Mine comprises items that can be immediately passed on to other people to deal with, and items that never seem to leave my in-tray.These include customer rates, invitations to various events, copies of paid bills that you need to keep for reference and miscellaneous items for which I never seen to have time to set up a new file.
Then there's the totally ridiculous letter from some ill-informed idiot that occasionally comes in. Some go straight in the bin, but others are from statutory authorities and you know you have to deal with them.This sort hangs around in my in-tray until I suddenly realise that if I don't deal with it right now, something unpleasant is going to happen. I had one of these letters quite
recently. It was in connection with a summons we had previously received from a magistrate's court in the South-East of England. One of our drivers had been stopped and his tacho chart had ben confiscated by the police.
I wasn't too bothered by this. In fact I was slightly amused that we should receive a summons threatening prosecution for allowing a driver to work with insufficient weekly rest based on the information gleaned from a single chart.
I put in a call to our local Ministry office and spoke to one of the officers.When he called we went through the summons and I showed him all the relevant paperwork. Not only could they not prosecute fairly (because they didn't have two weeks' worth of tachographs for that driver) but they also had the wrong registration number on the summons. My transport manager duly
made the two-and-a-half-hour drive to the magistrates court to put our case.The first question was how we were going to plead —guilty or not guilty? Not guilty, of course! "Case adjourned," said the magistrates, and my transport manager was robbed of the opportunity of explaining why this case should not be going to court.
Instead he was told that a new date for the hearing would be set and we would be informed of that date in due course.We'd also be required to supply witnesses, statements and soon. A month later I received a letter advising that the hearing was set for a date some two weeks hence. This letter became an important feature of my in-tray because this time I was going to be the one ap
pearing in court.
I wrote to the court and to the Crown Prosecution Service as I knew our house was in order. I explained the tacho laws and asked how it was that they could prosecute us for an offence when they had no evidence and had even failed to put the correct registration number on the summons.
I enclosed a copy of the charts and sent both letters by registered post. And then I waited. The day prior to the court hearing I received a letter from the CPS stating it would not be prosecuting, but explaining that, if we insisted, they could go ahead with the hearing if we wanted to waste tax-payers' money and spend a day in court. I think I'll give the second option a miss. •