Stalin meets Monty Python
Council punishes decorator with on-the-spot fine for smoking in his van
Simon de Bruxelles
July 25, 2008
A self-employed painter and decorator has been given a £30 on-the-spot fine for smoking in his own van because it is classified as a workplace.
Gordon Williams, 58, went out to buy some teabags for his wife when he was stopped as part of a roadside check by council officials.
Moments earlier he had lit a cigarette and was issued the penalty notice under anti-smoking legislation that bans it in the workplace. Mr Williams, a grandfather, is planning to appeal against the fine even though his wife has already paid it.
Although he uses the unmarked van to transport his paint and ladders he says it is not a workplace and he uses it only to travel to and from jobs.
Mr Williams said: “I was on my way to a shop to buy some teabags when the council official pulled me over. I was told that because my van is my place of work I had broken the smoking laws.
“I am dumbfounded. The van is only insured for private use and to get me to and from work. It is not my place of work. I decorate houses, not vans. I don’t use it for work so I can’t see how they can do me for smoking in the workplace.”
The decorator, from Llanafan, near Aberystwyth, Mid Wales, supports the ant-ismoking laws and says he would never light up near a non-smoker.
He said: “I respect anyone who chooses not to smoke but I would also ask for the same respect – to have the freedom to smoke in my own private vehicle.”
Mr Williams, who smokes ten cigarettes a day, was on the A487 near Aberystwyth when his Suzuki Carry van was pulled over by Ceredigion council officials carrying out safety checks.
He believes it is the first ticket of its kind handed out by the council since the smoking regulations came in last year, because the fixed-penalty notice was numbered 0001.
Mr Williams’s wife, Sue, 56, paid the fine because she was worried that it would be doubled if he did not pay immediately.
She said: “If it wasn’t paid in a certain time it doubled so I went to the council offices and gave them the £30. Even they were a bit surprised by it. I asked for a receipt but they didn’t have any special forms for it.
“They just wrote out that I had paid them £30 on a plain piece of paper.
“If you ask me they have overstepped the mark. I use the van myself for shopping trips – does that mean I also couldn’t smoke in there? It was a very expensive packet of teabags. It just doesn’t make sense to us.”
A spokesman for Ceredigion council defended the fine. He said: “The general position in relation to smoking legislation is that there are very few exemptions to the smoking ban.
“It affects most public premises, including work places and work vehicles.”
However, Simon Clark, director of the smokers’ pressure group Forest, described it as “absolutely ridiculous”.
He said: “It smacks of some jobs-worth council official interpreting the law to the most extreme level. This surely is not what the change in the law was intended for – it was not meant to harass and persecute people going about their ordinary lives.
“It is ridiculous that someone should be fined for smoking in their own private vehicle away from any workplace.”
A careful reading of the smoke-free premises regulations for Wales suggests that the council officials may have been overzealous.
A spokesman for the Welsh Assembly, which drafted the legislation, said: “Smoking is permitted in vehicles used for work purposes that are for the sole use of the driver and are not used as a workplace by anyone else.”
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