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Benefits fraud hits licence
Page 18
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A Cumbrian haulier, ordered to do 240 hours of community service after he and three of his drivers had admitted their part in a 216,000 benefit fraud, has now lost his CI-licence, Thomas Roberts, trading as JP Hutton, of Newland Gardens, Workington, had been called before North Western Traffic Commissioner Beverley Ball. He held an international licence for three vehicles.
PC Kenneth Heddle of Cumbria Pace said that last August he was approached by the DSS serious fraud team to assist with an investigation into benefit fraud. He examined tachograph charts completed by three drivers who had been claiming benefit while working for Roberts.
An analysis of these and other charts revealed various drivers' hours and tachograph offences, including a number of apparently false records.
For Roberts, Andrew Woolfall said the drivers had denied knowingly making false records.
In reply to the TC. Heddle said that the vast majority of the tachograph charts showed offences and anyone who had any knowledge of the regulations should have picked up most of them.
'This with the DSS is the first time I have been in trouble in my life," said Roberts. As far as the tachograph records were concerned, he had not checked every chart and realised he ought to have been stricter with the drivers.
He said that he did not know how to read charts properly, adding that arrangement had now been made for the charts to be analysed by an outside agency.
Woolfall warned that if Roberts lost the ability to run large vehicles he would lose his sole contract and the business would collapse.
Revoking the licence, the TC said that she took a serious
view of the fact that during the Benefits Agency investigation he had signed a witness statement that proved to be false. His daughter Jill Hutton, who told the investigators that she was a co-director in the firm, produced computer print-outs that perpetrated the fraud; she was cautioned. The offences discovered by the police included all types of hours and tachograph offences. Bell said she found it qi lamentable when a professic operator told her he could read a tachograph chart. 5. also took account of a CON tion in 1999 for operating ml vehicles than were authoris and of five convictions January 2000 for using vehic on a national licence on inter tonal journeys, and one of I ing to produce tachogrl records.