£2,215 Penalties for Hours and Records Offences Imposed
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OFFENCES relating to hours and records have, during the past week, cost two operators and their drivers nearly £2,215. The employers were fined a total of £873, with £1,008 10s. costs, and the drivers £325, with £8 8s. costs.
The places at which these penalties were imposed were widely separated, which suggests that the campaign against breaches of the law on hours and records is national in scope.
Pleading guilty at Kidderminster to 65 summonses-42 of allowing workers to drive for continuous periods of more than 11 hours, and 23 of allowing workers to drive without 10 hours' continuous rest—Brunton's, Ltd., Kidderminster, were fined the total of £195 and ordered to pay £956 costs.
Four of the company's men appeared on a series of summonses for driving excessive hours and not having enough rest, and fines of £42, £40, £30 and £18 respectively were imposed on them. Each man was ordered to pay £2 2s, costs.
Prosecuting for the Ministry of Transport, Mr. M. T. A. Matthews said that in the cases before the court there was no instance in which the men had worked less than 13 hours, and in some it was 17 hours.
They had been setting out at 3-5 a.m. to take loads of carpets to the docks and had been returning to Kidderminster at 8-10 p.m. It was impossible to make the journey to London docks and back in the permitted time.
Mr. E. O. Savery, for the company, said that the offences were technical and arose out of the pressure of export trade, in which the concern had a fine record. There were long delays at London docks and in the 10 miles or so approaching them. The men were often in the docks up to four or six hours, and this was included in their driving time. He did not agree that the return journey to Kidderminster could not be done in the 11 hours.
Fines totalling £678, with 152 10s, costs, were imposed upon Kenyon, Son and Craven, Ltd., wholesale confectioners and nut merchants, Fitzwilliam Road, Rotherham, at Rotherham last week for 113 offences concerned with dri,vers' hours and records. Drivers paid fines amounting to £195.
Mr. E. Wurzal, prosecuting, said that the offences disclosed by examination of the records were so many that the prosecution had not the temerity to fill the bench's list with them. A number of offences was to be taken into consideration.
Aid. E. J. Clarke, a director of the company, pleaded guilty to all the summonses on behalf of the concern. The employer, he said, was in the hands of the long-distance diivers who wanted to get home and did not always fulfil the requirements of the law.