Permissive Coventry
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• Coventry City Council was accused of "not knowing what its lorry drivers were doing" when Solihull magistrates fined it £2,000 for permitting a refuse driver to exceed his hours.
The magistrates heard that the council had been fined £6,000 at a previous hearing for overloading its vehicles.
At the latest hearing the council pleaded not guilty to three charges of permitting driver Peter Nestor to exceed his 11-hour day. It was found guilty on two of these charges.
Nestor was given a conditional discharge for 12 months after admitting two charges of exceeding his hours.
Prosecuting for the Vehicle Inspectorate, Helen Bradin said: "Nestor had worked 11 hours 45 minutes on at least one occasion and the council had not known what their drivers were doing. The logbooks did not correspond with Nestor's clocking on and off and the council did not have a system."
Nestor said that on the day of the alleged offence he had been detained in in a traffic jam, at a depot and waiting fora vehicle to be repaired.
Defending Nestor, Louise Denning said this waiting time should be considered under a rarely used domestic statute which applied to refuse drivers but not to general lorry drivers governed by EU rules.