Bill"S Overload fine reduced
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• Fines totalling £2,850 imposed on EOM Construction and one of its drivers for overloading offences have been cut on appeal to Stoke-on-Trent Crown Court.
Newcastle-under-Lyme magistrates had fined the Kearsley, Manchester-based company £1,100 for exceeding the permitted first axle weight of a 7.5-tonne vehicle and £650 for exceeding its permitted gross weight. Driver Craig Benjamin had been fined £750 for the axle weight offence and £350 for the gross weight offence.
For the DOT Vehicle Inspectorate, Beverley Bell said that the vehicle, which had been carrying an item of plant, had been stopped in a check at Doxey on the M6 last December. Inspectorate policy was now not to prosecute multiple overloading offences arising from the same facts, she said, but only to proceed on one offence, except, as in this case, where the excess weights were substantial.
For both company and driver, John Backhouse said that non mally, the item of plant concerned was moved to and from sites by a larger vehicle. When the smaller truck was used, the counterweights, which weighed 1,116kg, were removed, using the machine itself to lift them off.
On this occasion, the machine had broken down and had to be taken to the manufacturer for repair.
Only the smaller vehicle had a winch if the machine was unable to climb aboard the larger vehicle under its own steam, he said. What was overl(x)ked was that the counter-weights could not be removed—and they accounted for the excess weight.
Recorder Oliver Jones reduced the fines for the axle overload to £500 for Benjamin and to £840 for the company, and quashed the fines for the gross overload, substituting them with absolute discharges.
He said he accepted the defence argument that the two offences arose from the same set of facts and that therefore only one penalty was appropriate.
He ordered the defence appeal costs be paid out of public funds.