A LANDSCAPE gardener has been banned from the roads after he was caught on a Herefordshire road while three times the drug limit.

Stephen Clements admitted drug driving when he appeared before magistrates in Hereford.

Clements was stopped behind the wheel of his Ford Transit van and asked to carry out a roadside drug test by police on the A4110 in Aymestry on March 17, prosecutor Shafquat Reaz said.

He was arrested after it returned a positive result for cannabis and taken into custody, where an evidential blood test revealed he had 6.3 microgrammes of cannabis metabolite delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol per litre of blood, more than three times the legal limit of two.

George Cousins, for Clements, said the 37-year-old had fully cooperated with officers at the police station after his arrest.

"He was on his way to work at the time and he accepts he had taken cannabis the night before, Mr Cousins said.

"He said he had significant mental health issues in the past and that cannabis helped him to deal with that.

"This is going to have a big effect on him. He runs his own landscape gardening business and that has suffered during Covid. It was just starting to pick up again, but as a one-man-band that will not be able to carry on if he has not got his licence."

Clements, of Woodedge, Ross-on-Wye, was disqualified from driving for 12 months and fined £120. He must also pay costs of £135 and a £34 victim surcharge.