A DRIVING ban and unpaid work have been handed to a Carlisle man who accepted that he “made a huge mistake” by driving after using cocaine.

Police caught 53-year-old Luis Costa, 53, at 9pm on October 7 last year after they spotted him driving out of the Aldi car park on the city’s Dalston Road without having switched on his lights.

When they stopped his Ford Focus in nearby Kenmount Place a short time later they administered a roadside drugs test, which gave a positive result.

A later blood analysis showed the defendant, of Warwick Road, had almost seven times the permitted level of cocaine in his system. At the city’s Rickergate court, he pleaded guilty to drug driving.

Prosecutor George Shelley said that there was also evidence of morphine and methadone in Costa’s system, though not at an illegal level.

Mark Shepherd, defending, told the court: “This was a huge mistake and he accepts that he had been consuming cocaine, and that is not something that is a regular thing for him at all.

“He was driving and he was properly stopped and he knows he is going to lose his licence as a result of this.”

A night-shift warehouse worker, Costa had been a driver but he believed he would be able to continue working for the same employer. Mr Shepherd said the morphine was used by the defendant for pain relief and the methadone was on prescription.

There were no issues with those substances, he added.

District Judge John Temperley imposed a 12-month community order, which will include 100 hours of unpaid work. He also banned the defendant from driving for 18 months and ruled he must pay £85 costs and a £114 surcharge.