A YOUNG trainee hairdresser has been forced to abandon her plans to set up her own business after she was caught drink-driving in an uninsured car.

Police watched as Jenna Pavis went through a red light, drove without headlights at night through part of Acomb and swerved on to the wrong carriageway. When they stopped her at the junction of Water End and Boroughbridge Road, they realised she had been drinking.

A breath test gave a reading of 95 microgrammes of alcohol in 100 millilitres of breath, two-and-a-half times the permitted limit of 35 microgrammes. Pavis, 27, of Beckfield Lane, Acomb, pleaded guilty to drink-driving and driving without insurance and was banned from driving for two years.

She was also ordered to perform 100 hours’ unpaid work and pay £85 prosecution costs.

Pavis’ solicitor, Keith Haggerty, said she had planned to set up her own mobile hairdresser’s business once she qualified as a hairdresser in about a month’s time. But the driving ban meant she now could not do that.

“What she did that night was very much out of character,” he said.

Pavis had been driving for ten years and had an eight-year no claims bonus before she was stopped on May 22.

She had been to the races with her boyfriend and some other friends and had had no intention of driving.

After the races, they had gone to the pub before returning to the boyfriend’s house where they intended to spend the night and where she had left her car.

But the couple argued and, in a temper and with her judgement impaired by drink, she started to drive home.

About two weeks before she was stopped, there had been a problem over a standing order between her bank and her insurance company which meant that her insurance had been cancelled. She had intended to renew it.

Cathy Turnbull, prosecuting, told York magistrates officers were in an unmarked police car when they saw Pavis driving at a fast speed without lights at about 1am.