A DANGEROUS driver who failed to do payback work because he did not want to leave his dog on its own has been jailed.

Mathew Scott was meant to have completed 70 hours of unpaid work and a probation-run Thinking Skills Course, but failed to turn up for almost all his appointments.

He was warned repeatedly but carried on missing meetings with his probation officer. On one occasion he said he could not leave his dog alone and on others he said he had got the days mixed up.

Scott was on a suspended sentence for dangerous driving after a police chase through residential streets which ended with him trying to leg it while leaving a terrified female passenger in his abandoned car.

He went on to assault police by spitting a cigarette at an officer as he was being arrested for smashing a window at his mother’s house in Kingsteignton.

Scott, aged 25, formerly of Chariot Drive, Kingsteignton, but now of Torquay, admitted breaching a suspended sentence and a community order and was jailed for a total of six months by Judge David Evans at Exeter Crown Court.

He told him: ‘I do not doubt that you were going through a low and difficult time and there may have been problems with making arrangements for your pet but these are the sorts of things an adult, particularly after so many warnings, needs to plan for.

‘It is no excuse to say you got the dates mixed up. You can’t go through life making this many excuses for yourself.

‘You should have completed the unpaid work and the Thinking Skills Programme by now. Instead, you have completed next to nothing.’

Mr Herc Ashworth, prosecuting, said Scott missed a string of appointments from September last year until January 16 this year. He has been suspended from unpaid work and the probation service no longer feel able to work with him.

He said that Scott told his supervising officer he could not attend one meeting last October because he could not find anyone to look after his dog.

Miss Sally Daulton, defending, said Scott and his dog were homeless at the time but he now has a stable address. She said he missed some appointments when his phone was being repaired and others while living in a basement with no signal.

She said he wants to carry on working with probation and is getting on well with his latest supervising officer. She said an earlier pre-sentence report had concluded that prison would be detrimental to his mental health.

In the previous cases Scott admitted dangerous driving in August 2021 and received an eight months suspended sentence. He broke that by assault an emergency worker in June 2022, for which he was ordered to do 70 hours of unpaid community work.