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Magistrates don't buy English holiday
Page 26
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A DRIVER WHO produced a forged letter to pretend he was on holiday when he was working and who failed to produce that week's tachograph charts has been ordered to pay £550 in fines and costs.
The driver's ruse was uncovered by a traffic examiner who remembered stopping him at a similar check during the week that he was supposed to be on holiday. Ivan English, of Craigavon,Northern Ireland, admitted the offences when he appeared before the Wallasey magistrates. He was fined £150 for failing to produce tachograph charts, £300 for using a false instrument, and £100 costs. Prosecuting for VOSA, John Heaton said that on Sunday 14 December an artic belonging to Hume International Transport and driven by English was stopped in a roadside check at Twelve Quays Port,
Birkenhead. English produced one chart from the tachograph; he told the traffic examiner that he had been on holiday for a week and produced a letter purporting to confirm that fact.
However, the examiner recalled English being stopped in a similar check at the same location the previous Sunday.
Asked what his motive was for producing the letter, English said it was because he had not had a 24-hour break between the two weeks.
English apologised, but said he had only recently started with his employers and did not want to let them down. He had a number of debts after giving up being an owner-driver. Fining English, the magistrates said that, as an experienced HGV driver, he knew the score.