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Boss and two drivers jailed for tacho fraud
Page 34
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The company's office manager and 12 of its drivers are given community punishment orders and fines.
A NEWCASTLE H A ULAGE boss has been jailed for 15 months after pleading guilty to tachograph fraud involving another manager and the firm's drivers. Two drivers have also been jailed.
Mark Howdon, director and transport manager of Throckley, Tyne & Wearbased MM Howdon, admitted the offences at Newcastle upon Tyne Crown Court. They included conspiring with the company's office manager Philip Appleby and 20 of the company's former drivers to falsify tachograph charts in June and July 2004.
In jailing Howdon and two of the drivers involved, Judge John Evans said no one should underrate the seriousness of such offences, and immediate prison sentences were unavoidable.
The drivers jailed were Michael Birkley of Felton for four months, after pleading guilty to 36 offences of falsification, and Garry Thwaites of Longtown for three months, after pleading guilty to 30 such offences.
Howdon and Appleby pleaded guilty to conspiracy and 20 drivers pleaded guilty to various numbers of offences of falsification. Appleby and 12 drivers were given community punishment orders of 50 to 180 hours and four received fines totalling £2,650. All defendants not receiving prison sentences were each ordered to pay £500 costs.
Mark Laprell, prosecuting for Vosa, said the company had been principally engaged on timed deliveries with fresh produce. Howdon made all the management decisions and set each driver's work on a day-to-day basis. It was accepted that Appleby was effectively the messenger. The work habitually given to the drivers could not be done within the permitted hours limits. As a result the drivers falsified their tachograph charts, something both Howdon and Appleby knew.
All the drivers had said they had handed their tachograph charts into the office. That was significant as a large proportion of the charts had not been retained when the office came to be searched. If Howdon was allocating work that could not be done within the hours limits, yet the charts looked legitimate, they must necessarily be false. Howdon had said they "did not keep time sheets as that's how the Olivers were caught", referring to the 2004 trial of William Martin Oliver and Partners for tachograph fraud ('Two Oliver bosses are jailed', CM 24 March 2005).
For Howdon, Richard Bloomfield said three customers had gone into liquidation owing the company £300,000. Howdon cut corners to try to keep the business afloat but failed. For the drivers, it was said they had been put under intolerable pressure and had operated in a culture and regime of implied threats.
The judge said it was clear that a culture of deliberately ignoring the regulations had developed at the company. Howdon had been party to the "deliberate and dishonest falsification of tachograph records on a grand scale". The judge concluded that he had engineered that to make a profit or cut his losses at the expense of safety.