11 Sentencing guidelines for hauliers caught falsifying their tachograph charts
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are expected to be drafted by a new independent body set up to promote greater consistency in court sentencing.
Home Secretary Jack Straw {right) has brought together a panel of legal experts to offer objective advice to the Court of Appeal. The court will then pass on its legally binding decisions to the high Court and Crown Courts, providing sentencing precedents for the worst criminal offences, including some road traffic cases.
The new body will be empowered to revise sentencing guidelines for the Wolves of causing death by dangerous driving and drink-driving. It will also be able to formulate the first guidelines for falsification of tachograph charts and the aiding and abetting of falsification by companies.
The changes are not expected to affect sentences given out by magistrate courts, including offences such as overloading, because the Court of Appeal is normally only involved in the most serious of criminal offences.
Andrew Woolfall, solicitor at Wake Dyne Lawton in Chester, says: It will be useful if they give us some guidance for falsification so that we could have some kind of idea on the kind of sentence that would usually be imposed."