THE company delivering cement to the site of the new £440m Westgate development has admitted its drivers “deliberately” flouted instructions and broke council restrictions.

Oxfordshire County Council said it was “extremely disappointing” Hanson UK had struggled to prevent drivers from going to Oxford through the village of Sutton, but officers confessed they could take little action.

The firm secured permission to go through the village in November, after claiming longer alternatives were causing cement to set in the trucks before they arrived in Oxford, but it has not yet submitted the required legal documents.

This means lorries that have gone through Sutton since are still breaching the restrictions.

At a committee meeting yesterday, managers from the company apologised to councillors and said they would introduce new GPS tracking systems by June to police the route properly.

Dave Normington, the firm’s land and planning manager, added: “I can’t say hand on heart that there will not be future breaches unless we have senior management in the cab of each lorry.

“But we can minimise it to the smallest possible number.”

The reason some drivers flouted the rules was because they are paid – including fuel costs – for a 16-mile journey but the Sutton route reduced this to just eight miles, he told the committee.

During the meeting councillors grilled the Hanson managers about breaches of the route agreement, with Eynsham county councillor Charles Matthew claiming lorries had passed through Sutton 21 times since December 16.

Mr Matthew supplied the council with CCTV images of the lorries, with council officers also catching them in Sutton during their own spot checks in December, January and February.

One driver even stopped to ask a watching council officer for directions, the local authority said.

Mr Matthew told the committee: “If we put these conditions on planning applications then we have got to enforce them.”

In two separate letters on December 8 and 15 county council officer Chris Kenneford told Hanson of the breaches.

Hanson said yesterday it would have the final legal documents for the route change submitted by the end of the week.

Mr Normington added the company had “always sought to comply with both the spirit and letter of the routeing agreement”.

He added: “This problem is not one of either commitment or communication; it is purely down to some drivers deliberately ignoring explicit instructions.”

The company would be standing down drivers without pay and haul them into disciplinary hearings for future breaches, terminate the contracts of those who broke the rules or report franchisees to the Driver Vehicle and Standards Agency, he said.