Happy Days wins in hours case
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• Eccleshall magistrates have cleared Happy Days (Woodseaves) of permitting drivers to break the drivers' hours rules. The company had denied eight offences of permitting six drivers to exceed 41 hours driving without taking the required break and to exceed the daily driving limit.
Prosecuting for the DTp, Michael McKnight said the case had arisen out of a routine check of tachograph records by traffic examiners. The prosecution case was that Happy Days had permitted the offences by a lack of a proper system of checking charts.
Questioned by John Backhouse, defending, traffic examiner Richard Denby said that there was nothing in the regulations requiring an employer to check every tachograph chart. He had looked at about 450 tachograph charts involving 20 drivers: there was no pattern of offending.
Backhouse said it was not suggested that Happy Days knew the offences were being cornmited, so the prosecution had to show that the company had deliberately disregarded the obvious, in that the offences were so prevalent that they ought to have known that further offences would be committed. Merely failing to have a proper system of checking was not enough.
The magistrates ordered that the company's defence costs be paid out of public funds.