Drivers admitted 87 offences
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• Twelve drivers employed by William Hall, trading as WF Hall & Sons, of Fishguard, have been ordered to pay fines and costs totalling £2,940 by Haverford West magistrates for a series of hours and tachograph offences.
The drivers admitted 87 offences of taking insufficient daily rest, exceeding the daily driving limit, exceeding 4.5 hours driving without a 45-minute break, failing to keep tacho records and failing to make the required entries on the centre field of their charts. They were each fined £200 on the first offence with no separate penalty for the others with £50 or £30 costs, depending upon the number of offences.
Traffic examiner Rhian Pritchard said there was a full investigation of three months'worth of tacho charts alter one of the firm's vehicles was stopped in a roadside check.
Defending, Andrew Woolfall said the offences mainly related to failures to take sufficient daily rest and had arisen out of a misunderstanding of the regulations. The drivers had been working to the old spread-over rules—taking nine and 10 hours continuous rest but because the "artificial" 29-hour day sliced into it, it could not be counted as continuous rest. The drivers were starting their daily rest periods too late in the working clay. There had been no financial gain to any of the drivers, he added.
The hearing of six charges against another of the firm's drivers, Robert Jeffries, was adjourned for 28 days after the court was told the summonses had not been served because he had changed his address.
The hearing of allegations against Hall that he had permitted the offences committed by the drivers was also adjourned. until February
The drivers who were fined were: Maurice King, 14 offences; John Parker, 13; David Thomas, 11: Adam Kelly and William George, eight each; Ian James, Alan Thompson and Andrew Thomas, seven each; Derek Morgan, six; Howard Thomas, three; Rhydian Knott, two; and Malcolm Jenkins, one offence.