Tacho fines cut
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• A Lancashire owner driver, fined £5,200 for falsifying tachograph records, exceeding hours limits and for excise licence offences, had them reduced to £3,200 on appeal to Manchester Crown Court last week.
Stuart McNulty, of Heywood, admitted 12 offences of making false entries, 10 of exceeding eight hours driving, six of using a vehicle without an excise licence and two of using a vehicle when the wrong rate of duty was paid.
Middleton magistrates fined him £200 on each of the false records and hours offences and £100 on each of the excise licence offences.
They also ordered him to pay back duty of .£910.37 and prosecution costs of £75.
For the Crown, Mark Laprelle said McNulty worked for Sea Route Ferry.
His tachograph charts for a three-and-a-half month period were examined by a traffic examiner and 12 bore a false name. His articulated outfit was taxed at the private light goods rate of £100 instead of £2,730.
When interviewed, McNulty said he returned to this country from France on July 1, and in July and August he ran the vehicle without tax as he was unable to afford to tax it. In September he had taxed it at the private light goods rate.
He had entered false names on the charts to disguise the fact he was working excessive hours. He was struggling to keep the business going and felt he had to use the vehicle to its maximum.
Invoices showed that in the 18 weeks from July 6, McNulty had earned £20,438.26 from Sea Route Ferry. He had exceeded the eight-hour daily driving limit by between one hour 46 minutes and two hours 50 minutes.
For McNulty, Paul Holmes said that if it was accepted after September 29 that 10 hours is a safe drinving period, the seriousness of McNulty's offences took on a different complexion.
Reducing the fines and ordering McNulty to pay £100 a month, Judge Douglas Forster said that fines are not supposed to put a defendent with a hitherto unblemished record out of business.
The level of fines imposed for the false records and excise licence offences could not be criticised, but he felt there is some duplication between those offences and the hours offences and for that reason he thought it right to reduce the total fines by £2,000.