Ipswich/Little Blakenham – Disqualified driver jailed following collision

A 20-year-old disqualified driver from Little Blakenham has been jailed for repeated motoring offences.

Thomas Gillingham, of Somersham Road, appeared before Ipswich Magistrates’ Court on Tuesday 11 February, where he was sentenced to 42 weeks’ imprisonment. He will remain disqualified from driving until 2028 and was also ordered to pay £239 in costs and surcharges.

Gillingham had pleaded guilty to the following six offences: two counts of driving whilst disqualified; two counts of driving without insurance; one count of driving without due care and attention; and one count of failing to give information relating to the identification of the driver.

He had previously appeared before magistrates on 7 November 2024, where he was given a 22-week prison sentence suspended for 24 months. Gillingham was also disqualified from driving until November 2028. This followed convictions for driving whilst disqualified and driving without due care and attention.

The first of the recent offences took place last month, when on Sunday 5 January Gillingham purchased a Volkswagen Eos online and travelled to the Telford area of Shropshire to collect it, leaving another car behind which was then collected at a later date.

Five days later, at around 10.05pm on Friday 10 January, a marked roads policing vehicle passed the VW Eos being driven by Gillingham on Defoe Road in Ipswich and he immediately sought to avoid any sort of encounter with police, driving off at speed in the opposite direction.

At just before 10.15pm the car was located a short distance away on Whitton Church Lane, where it had crashed into a hedge on a left-hand bend. Gillingham had fled the scene.

After vehicle checks showed Gillingham to be the registered owner of the car, an officer went straight to his nearby home address to await his return. At 10.38 the officer rang the doorbell camera and spoke to Gillingham through its communication function.

Gillingham claimed to be at a public house in Leiston and as the background noise was consistent with someone being in a pub, the officer then went to the nearest pub to where the collision occurred, which is approximately one mile away in Palmcroft Road.

As the officer entered the pub at 10.47pm, they spotted a man immediately begin to walk towards the door, before then running outside. The officer chased after him and quickly caught and detained Gillingham.

He was taken to Martlesham Police Investigation Centre for questioning, where he denied he had been driving the car at the time of the collision. He was released on bail and given 28 days to provide the details of who was driving the car if it wasn’t him, as required to do so as the registered keeper.

He was rearrested on Monday 10 February having failed to provide the details of an alternative driver on the night of the 10 January and also in connection with the matters in Shropshire.

He was subsequently charged with the offences as detailed above and remanded to appear at court the following day.

In response to a Suffolk Constabulary social media post in relation to his previous conviction in November last year, Gillingham had posted comments on the Suffolk Constabulary page, openly mocking police as follows: “Some say after recent events my driving is above the standard of the ‘advanced drivers’ in their traffic cars”; and “Maybe their eyes are so much worse they can’t keep up with me.”

PC Tom Ives, from the Roads and Armed Policing Team, said: “Thomas Gillingham has shown his flagrant lack of respect for the criminal justice system by repeatedly offending and ignoring his disqualification from driving.

“Despite being on a suspended sentence, Gillingham continued to drive, putting members of the public at risk through his poor and careless driving, evidenced by his crash on the 10 January.

“He was located and identified through quick thinking by one of our colleagues on the local Response Investigation Team, before the officer in charge of the investigation then worked tirelessly to obtain evidence and bring this matter before a court.

“I welcome the court’s decision to send Gillingham to prison and I hope that this sends a message to other motorists who are thinking of driving whilst subject to a court-imposed driving ban. By taking motorists such as Gillingham off the roads, we are continuing with our efforts to ensure that the roads in Suffolk are safe for everyone to use legally.”

Acting Sergeant James Perrier, who oversaw the investigation, added: “On the dates of his offending, Thomas Gillingham chose to put other road users at risk by driving without a licence and without insurance, alongside his poor manner of driving.

“The court’s decision to impose an immediate custodial sentence is one which we welcome, as it negates the very real risk that he poses to law-abiding road users. It is only by luck that on this occasion there was no one using the stretch of road that Gillingham crashed on, as if there had been then we may have been looking at a more serious outcome.”