Charter: four jailed
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THE NINE-WEEK Cake tachograph records conspiracy trial ended on Monday with jail sentences being served on four of the five defendants.
Two directors, two traffic clerks and the Cornier general manager of Charter Roadways had all denied conspiring together and with drivers to make false entries in tachographs, but all were found guilty at Preston Crown Court this week.
The jury returned unanimous guilty verdicts against director Gordon Greenwood of Clitheroe (jailed for 12 months), director William Graham of Forton, near Lancaster (jailed for 101/2 months), former general manager Gordon McLeod of Blackpool (jailed for nine months), and traffic clerk Philip Lonsdale of Chorley (jailed for six months, with three suspended for six months) (CM, March 22).
The other traffic clerk, David Lindley of Bisphain. was found not guilty by a majority verdict and has been conditionally discharged for 12 months.
Judge Alistair Bell told the five that Charter and those who ran it had diced with the safety of the public.
The safety of thousands depended daily on the alertness of drivers of heavy vehicles on motorways, yet deliberately and for gain the defendants had risked that safety by allocating drivers work which could not he done within the hours limits.
He said hundreds of charts were falsified and drivers were threatened with unemployment and bound to their vehicles by having to work for eight weeks in hand.
After returning the guilty verdicts, the jury was told that Charter was fined i:4,260 by Chorley magistrates in October 1982 after being convicted of 44 offences of permitting breaches of the drivers' hours regulations.
Twenty of the company's drivers who had pleaded guilty to making false entries in tachograph charts were given conditional discharges for 12 months.
'Utley were: Andrew Atkinson, Anthony Brown, Andrew Day, Thomas Hadzik, James Hoaen, Dermot O'Brien, Kenneth Poppleton, Christopher Prince, John Vincent, Michael Scothern, Barry Rich, Robert Rogers, Anthony Westwood, Robert Blair, Stuart Taylor, Terence Fluntriss, Peter Walker, Mark Smith, Harold Eckersall and Alan McLeod.
Judge Bell said there was a substantial body of evidence that the drivers were in fact short changed. They had no protection from self exploitation and might well have been exploited by the company.