A MOTORIST has been jailed for 12 weeks for driving while banned after police were slammed for not charging him with drink driving.

Aaron John Pendlebury, a previously convicted drink driver, gave a positive breath test at the roadside and failed another test at the police station.

But officers believed his claims that he had drunk vodka after a crash in Blackburn and did not pursue a blood test.

Yesterday the Lancashire Telegraph reported how District Judge Peter Ward said police actions in not bringing drink-drive charges ‘beggared belief’.

But despite not being prosecuted for drink driving he was jailed for driving without insurance and while disqualified.

Pendlebury, who has three previous convictions for drink driving, was stopped by police after crashing in Blackburn.

Judge Ward said Pendlebury was 15 months into a four year ban imposed for his third offence of drink driving.

He said: “You were driving when you should not have been and there was an accident which was your fault.

“We know you had been drinking because you gave a positive reading. What happened after that is for other people to inquire into.”

Pendlebury, 28, of Higher House Close, Blackburn, told the Lancashire Telegraph that he was driving a Renault Megane because his girlfriend was unwell and her children needed picking up from Canterbury Street.

But as he pulled out of a junction on to nearby Sumner Street, he hit another car.

On driving while disqualified, he said: “I know I shouldn’t have been driving. It was a stupid mistake.”

Judge Ward said the police had ‘shot themselves in the foot’ by not completing the blood test.

He said: “It almost beggars belief that a man who has blown 50 in breath is not offered the option of giving blood and if that was positive he could have been charged and then the facts would have been the subject of a trial.

“I can’t understand why this man, who has three previous convictions for driving with excess alcohol, wasn’t given the option of a blood sample and then prosecuted.”