Vehicle and Operator Services Agency v George Jenkins Transport Ltd.

Documents may qualify as business documents under section 24 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988 without oral evidence from their maker, keeper or the person who supplied the information. The court may infer from the document’s appearance, its provenance and the surrounding circumstances that the statutory gateway conditions are satisfied. Section 24 requires proof that the document was created or received in the course of a business and that the information came from a person with, or reasonably supposed to have, personal knowledge. Once admitted, sections 25 and 26 provide safeguards against unfairness. Continuity may also be established by common-sense inferences where the documents requested and produced correspond in identity and content.

The Vehicle and Operator Services Agency prosecuted George Jenkins Transport Ltd. and associated drivers before the Isle of Wight Magistrates’ Court for tachograph and drivers’ hours offences under the Transport Act 1968. The prosecutor relied heavily on drivers’ time sheets. The District Judge ruled the documents inadmissible, following which the prosecution offered no evidence and the charges were dismissed.

VOSA appealed by way of case stated. The central issues were whether the time sheets satisfied the gateway conditions in section 24 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988 without direct evidence from their maker, and whether continuity or fairness concerns prevented their admission.

1. Appeal allowed. The question in the case stated was answered in the negative. The time sheets satisfied the two gateway conditions in section 24 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988.

2. Section 24 does not require a witness to produce and speak to each document, identify its maker, or prove directly the maker’s personal knowledge. The wording permits the court to draw reasonable inferences. The statutory purpose is to allow the document to speak for itself, subject to the safeguards in sections 25 and 26. The reasoning in R v Foxley [1995] 2 Cr App R 523 was compelling and was followed. The approach was also confirmed in R v Ilyas and Knight [1996] Crim LR 810.

3. The court was entitled, and in an appropriate case bound, to examine the face of the document and the circumstances in which it was obtained. Here, the time sheets appeared to be business records, had been requested from the respondent, and matched admissible tachograph material. Those matters supported the inference that both statutory conditions were met.

4. The continuity objection failed. Common sense permitted the inference that documents of the same character, referring to the same company, driver, vehicle and dates, were the documents requested and supplied. The possibility of omissions did not alter that conclusion.

5. Case [1991] Crim LR 192 concerned section 23 rather than section 24 and did not require a different result. R v M [2003] 2 Cr App R 322 established that there was no invariable rule preventing a conviction based solely, or decisively, on evidence which the accused had no opportunity to examine. The court left the magistrates to reconsider the section 25 safeguards and the reliability and fairness issues afresh.

6. VOSA was awarded its costs of the appeal and the hearing below, confined to the issue determined.

• High Court (Administrative Court): On an appeal by way of case stated, the court allowed VOSA’s appeal against the ruling of the Isle of Wight Magistrates’ Court dated 22 April 2003 and directed that the matter be reconsidered in accordance with its judgment.