Court: Donington on Bain man '˜did not know he was banned' from driving

Callum O’Meara, 21, of Meadowcroft, admitted the offence - as well as driving without insurance - when he appeared before magistrates at Skegness on March 29.

The court heard that he was seen driving a Vauxhall Corsa on February 1 by an off duty police officer who spoke to him when he pulled onto a petrol station on the A158 Lincoln Road in Horncastle.

Jim Clare, prosecuting, said O’Meara had been banned from driving for six months under the 
totting up procedure in November last year.

Mitigating, Dean Bawer said that when O’Meara had been spoken to by the police, he assumed that 
he must still have been disqualified from an offence three years ago 
for a ‘document offence’.

He said O’Meara had no knowledge of being banned under the totting up procedure in November and court records showed he had been fined £660 
and banned in his absence.

Official papers had been sent to an address O’Meara had left a year before so that he had not even realised 
he was being prosecuted.

Magistrates reduced the fine from November from £660 to £180 as the original court would not have 
known he was unemployed at the time and adjourned the case for sentence for driving while 
disqualified to April 26.

They also called for a report from the 
Probation Service.