TWO prison service security bosses have appeared in court to explain why they should not be jailed for contempt.

They had been summoned to Canterbury Crown Court after a serious blunder delayed the progress of a fraud trial.

The executives, from Premier Prison Services, which transports prisoners between jail and court in the South East, were ordered to explain why they shouldn’t find themselves behind bars for contempt.

Regional director for operations Malcolm Barlow and operations manager Lloyd Simmonds had to faced Judge Adele Williams who demanded to know if the delay was the result of a “cost-cutting” exercise.

She told them the company had shown a “lack of care and a lack of supervision over decisions being made on the ground”. But she ruled that Premier had not shown a deliberate contempt of court.

The Judge said the trial of a woman accused of a serious Post Office fraud had been delayed because she was still in a prison van in London when the case was due to start.

Mr Barlow admitted that staff had decided to drop off other prisoners to magistrates’ courts in London before taking the woman defendant to her trial at Canterbury Crown Court.

The judge said that cynics or sceptics might have concluded that the reason for the two and a half hour delay was just a “cost cutting exercise”. But Mr Simmonds denied it, adding that he didn’t want to be “incarcerated for stupidity”.

Mr Barlow added: “There was no excuse. To use a colloquialism, Premier Prison Services just ‘screwed up’.”

He said a senior staff member, Dawn Skepple, who was also ordered to appear in court, had made the decision to put the defendant in the van taking three other prisoners from Holloway to magistrates courts in London.

Mr Simmons said: “This suggestion wasn’t challenged. We made one mistake and compounded it by making a second mistake. I am very sorry for wasting the court’s time but it was an honest mistake.”

But Judge Williams told him: “I do not understand how someone could believe how you can take prisoners to three London courts and then get to Canterbury Crown Court on time. It just simply doesn’t work out in respect to the geography or the mathematics.”

She said that the 36-year-old defendant from Whitstable, had been woken up at 5am and told to get ready for the journey to Kent.

Premier staff collected her at 8am, expecting to arrive in court by 10am. But at 10.30am, the judge was told there had been a delay and the defendant was expected by 11.10am.

The defendant eventually arrived at about 12.30pm, causing problems with a pregnant post office employee who was half way through her evidence for the prosecution.

The judge said: “This woman had travelled all the way from Stoke on Trent to give her evidence and because of the delay, she had to stay overnight in Canterbury.”

She said the defendant had a right to appear at court in a position, if required, to give evidence - which she couldn’t after a four and a half-hour journey.

“And quite apart from the havoc that was caused, there is also the cost of the delay and the inconvenience to lawyers and jurors and court staff. I don’t know how much money was lost but it must have been substantial.”

Judge Williams said there had been an on-going problem with getting female prisoners to court from Holloway for “at least a decade”.

But after hearing from Jonathan Marks, QC, for Premier, the judge ruled there had been no deliberate contempt and allowed the three to leave court.

Mr Marks said that since the delay, Premier had put in place a change in procedure to ensure there would be no repeat of the error.

He added that they were also in talks with the Home Office to “cut through red tape” and allow women prisoners to be remanded at Rochester’s Cookham Wood Prison, rather than in London.

Judge Williams said that a fellow judge at Canterbury had been asked to monitor the delivery of prisoners to ensure that in future they arrive on time.