Mile End Road - Portsmouth
Portsmouth Magistrates Court - Wednesday 14th January 2009
Despite the fact (as District Judge Arnold pointed out), that the Crown were served with a detailed experts report, photographic exhibits and a complex skeleton argument in the September of 2008. The Court was at pains to ask why it was only on the morning of the hearing that the Crown Prosecution Service conceded that they had no means of establishing for the Court that the full requirements of section 85 of the Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984 had been complied with.
Whilst this admission dealt with one of a number of points relating to this speed limit plagued by a history of multiple signing defects, the Court were not illuminated regarding the presence of other signing issues which are a direct breach of statutory requirements and the directions of the Secretary of State for Transport.
Those defects, made clear to the Crown before the hearing, will also activate the provisions of section 85(4) of the 1984 act of Parliament resulting in a prohibition of conviction.
Tony Seaton, a local campaigner, having secured detailed photographic records of the signing issues is concerned that the local authority may be merely trying to ‘paper over the cracks’.
RMB Consulting are intrigued with the comments of the Safer Roads Partnership published in the Southern Daily Echo (below). Their press release, acknowledging the presence of defects, seeks to maintain that no person has been incorrectly fined or prosecuted (convicted).
If the signing is knowingly defective and the Act of Parliament prohibits a conviction - a concession agreed by the Crown Prosecution Service - one has to ask then how are the thousands of convictions borne by motorists over many years not a breach of Statute Law are not a wrongful conviction.
Richard Bentley of RMB Consulting and the defence Solicitor Mr Barry Culshaw were at pains to ensure that the Safer Roads Partnership signing officer were made fully aware of the ‘additional’ defects.
RMB Consulting looks forward to hearing when prohibited convictions and pending prosecutions are to be cancelled.
