A DONINGTON man came close to a jail term after police stopped him in a Mitsubishi Galant when he was only a matter of weeks into serving a three-year driving ban.
Christopher Bond (29), of Orchard Close, was pulled up in Green Lane, Moulton Seas End, on May 1 when his vehicle had a faulty brake light.
Jim Clare, prosecuting, told Spalding magistrates that Bond was banned from driving at the end of February for his second drink-drive offence within ten years.
Presiding magistrate John Reynolds warned Bond he had “crossed the custody threshold”, but after listening to mitigation the bench reduced that to a year-long community order with a requirement to do 200 hours’ unpaid work.
Penalty points were added to Bond’s licence, giving him a further six month ban.
Bond pleaded guilty to driving while disqualified and without insurance at Thursday’s hearing. Magistrates imposed no separate penalty for the insurance offence.
Solicitor Sacha Waxman, mitigating, said Bond had “a volatile argument with his partner and wanted to remove himself from the premises”.
She said the driving ban meant he had lost the ability to work, but his partner wanted to know when he was going to get a job.
Miss Waxman said he drove three miles to enquire about work, but now accepts he could have walked to that meeting.
She said: “It was a situation in which he felt desperate and he acted without thinking properly in relation to the consquences.”