A Berkshire man who took a drive into Wiltshire with a friend during lockdown has been convicted of breaching the coronavirus law.
Nicholas Heavingham, 30, appeared at Swindon Magistrates’ Court this week charged with leaving his home without a reasonable excuse during the Covid-19 emergency period. He pleaded guilty to the offence.
Crown prosecutor Kate Prince said police stopped the defendant, of London Road, Newbury, after an Automated Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) camera flagged up his car on the A4 at Froxfield in the early hours of the morning.
Officers found two occupants, the driver and a passenger, in the vehicle. When asked why they were out at 3am, they replied that ‘they couldn’t sleep, so took a drive’.
The pair were told this was not a reasonable excuse to be out and both were issued fixed penalty notices. However, Heavingham didn’t pay his fine and this resulted in a charge.
The court heard he was prosecuted for driving offences that arose out of the traffic stop for which he received fines of £440 at an earlier hearing.
Representing himself, Heavingham told the magistrates he and his friend suffered from depression and often went for drives.
He said the summons to court was the first he knew of the Covid fine.
“You should not have been out, but we hear you didn’t receive the paperwork”, the chair of the bench said before imposing a £26 fine and £34 victim surcharge – totalling the same sum as the original fixed penalty notice.
