Heathcote gets £5,000 fine
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• Dukinfield magistrates have imposed fines and costs totalling 25,175 on Stalybridgebased J & M Heathcote and the company's former transport manager Brian Howard after they admitted aiding and abetting the falsification of tachograph charts and permitting drivers to exceed the hours limits.
The company and Howard each pleaded guilty to 68 offences of aiding and abetting the falsification of charts and to 86 offences of permitting excess hours. The prosecution withdrew similar allegations against managing director Michael Heathcote.
Christopher Worthy, prosecuting, said a comprehensive list of offences had been committed by 25 of the company's drivers in December 1985 and January 1986. Drivers were pressurised into getting the job done, irrespective of the hours limits, and were threatened with dismissal when they protested.
Driver Fred Flynn said that he had been told that if he did not like it he knew where the gate was. He agreed he had never been told to falsify charts, and that he was unaware of any driver being sacked for refusing to exceed the hours limits.
Four other drivers told similar stories, but a sixth, Frederick Walker, maintained that he had never known any driver to be asked to exceed the hours limits.
Evidence was given by Howard that he had not checked charts as he should have done, because of pressure of work. He had never told drivers to exceed the hours limits or threatened them with the sack. He had gained nothing financially from the offences. He agreed that he had told drivers to get the job done, but he had meant within the law.
Heathcote said he now realised Howard had been vastly overworked, the problem being that the company had expanded too quickly. The company had lost a third of its customers because of publicity.
There had been no benefit to the company, the offences having been committed by the drivers for their own purposes. There was a misapprehension that excess driving created profit, but there was nowhere in the industrial belts in this country that could not be reached in six hours' driving. The company was tined a total of 23,830 with 21,200 costs. Howard, now unemployed, was fined 21.50 on each offence of aiding and abetting the falsification of records and 50p on each hours offence, making a total of 2145.