A FORMER member of the Health and Social Services board was jailed yesterday for eight weeks.

Chartered surveyor Bruce Mansell, 62, was also taken off the roads for eight years after admitting his second drink-drive offence in 10 years.

Mansell (pictured), who was described in the Magistrate’s Court as a ‘pillar of the community’, resigned as a non-political member of the Health board last month after admitting driving while more than three times the legal limit.

The court heard that a police officer following Mansell in Queen’s Road, St Peter Port, at about 8.05pm on 7 September noticed him swerving from side to side. He was driving very slowly. At the Mount Row/Le Vauquiedor junction the officer switched on the vehicle’s blue lights, to no effect. She then put on the siren, to which the defendant still did not respond.

He was arrested in his own driveway and initially denied that he had been drinking. Tests found he had 120 micrograms of alcohol per 100ml of breath. The limit is 35.

Mansell, of Les Rhabilleurs, The Hollies, Bailiff’s Cross Road, St Andrew’s, has a similar conviction from 2001 when a three-year driving disqualification was imposed.

Advocate Sarah Wallis said her client had shown considerable remorse and accepted that he has an alcohol problem, which he has begun to address. She added that the possibility of off-island treatment was being explored. Advocate Wallis said that Mansell had resigned from all committees and positions of responsibility.

She urged the court to impose an alternative to immediate custody, saying that a driving ban would protect the public and that he presented a low likelihood of general reoffending.

But Judge Philip Robey said the purpose of a prison sentence was to act as a deterrent. He said that after reading numerous letters and references, Mansell could be described as ‘a pillar of the community’. But he said his actions were ‘in every sense criminal’ and he ran a real risk of causing damage to property, injury or even death.

Judge Robey said prison was the only realistic sentence.