BRIEFS Fined for wrong tax rate
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• Using a vehicle taxed at the recovery vehicle rate, and failing to produce various documents, has cost a West Midlands company £3,426 in fines, costs and back duty.
Willenhall-based Jewkes Trading Co denied two offences of using vehicles at the wrong rate of vehicle excise duty when it appeared before Walsall magistrates. But it admitted six offences of failing to produce tachograph records, worksheets and invoices.
Prosecuting for the Vehicle Inspectorate, Beverley Bell said the company had taxed two vehicles at the recovery vehicle rate when they were ordinary goods vehicles. The legislation laid down that a vehicle was only a recovery vehicle while it was being used to recover a disabled vehicle.
The company held an 0licence for six vehicles, said Bell. Recovery vehicles were exempt from operator licensing, but both vehicles were specified on that licence in December 1994. Traffic exam iner Patricia Earp said she had requested charts for the two vehicles concerned. Analysis showed the vehicles had been used on the dates in question—and the traces indicated normal journeys, not recovery work. She pointed out that recovery vehicles were not required to use tachographs.
Vehicle examiner Michael Brown said he had visited the company's premises in January and taken photographs of the vehicles concerned; a tipper and a skip-hire vehicle. Neither could be used as recovery vehicles.
Managing director Brian Jewkes said the company's requirements for recovery vehicles came to an end towards the end of last year and the two vehicles were altered to do other work. He had not been aware that recovery vehicles were exempt from the tachograph regulations. When the vehicles were originally converted to recovery vehicles he had not realised they should have been taken off the 0licence. He was unable to say what vehicles were recovered on the days in question but that was the only purpose for which they were used.
He denied the tachograph charts in one case showed speeds that would not be recommended when towing a disabled HGV and in the other a pattern consistent with the collection and delivery of skips. The magistrates acquitted the company on the first charge but convicted it of the second, fining it £2,500 with £650 costs and £276.66 back duty.