Day of reckoning for 'drink drive loophole' Aldermaston community stalwart

Driver who was nearly more than four times the legal limit argued he should be acquitted

A COMMUNITY stalwart who tried to avoid a drink-driving conviction via a legal loophole after an horrific, head-on smash has received a suspended prison sentence.

Neil Thomas Dignan was also landed with a bill of more than £1,000, a lengthy driving ban and unpaid work.

Mr Dignan, chairman of the Aldermaston and Wasing Show and organiser of the village’s annual Blues On The Meadow festival, accepted he had drunk nearly four times the limit before the devastating collision.

But last month he failed to persuade magistrates that an experienced road traffic officer had used the wrong form of words when informing him of his rights – and that he should be acquitted.

At the previous hearing the court heard Mr Dignan was trapped, unconscious, in the wreckage of his Range Rover after the collision with a lorry at Woolhampton on the A4 Bath Road on November 7 last year.

The road was closed while firefighters battled for an hour to cut him free.

Tests later showed 296mg of alcohol per 100ml of blood in his system. The legal limit is 80mg.

Mr Dignan, aged 52, of Frouds Lane, Aldermaston, denied driving after drinking more than the legal limit on a technicality.

He claimed that when a police officer sought permission for the blood to be tested, he omitted a statutory warning. However magistrates rejected Mr Dignan’s account and found him guilty of drink-driving.

At a sentencing hearing on Friday, May 1, the court imposed a 20-week prison sentence, suspended for 12 months. They also ordered Mr Dignan to pay £800 costs, £200 compensation to the lorry driver and a statutory £80 surcharge.

He was also ordered to undergo treatment for alcohol dependency and to carry out 150 hours’ unpaid community work.

Finally, magistrates banned Mr Dignan from driving for 30 months.