Taxi Driver Online

Sunday Telegraph,24 / 12 / 2006

Two bus firms in Manchester have been told to suspend all services until January 2. following concerns about the safety of their drivers, some of whom are Polish. UK North and GM Buses Ltd. were ordered off the roads by the North west traffic commisioner, Beverley Bell, who launchedan enquiry after Martin Pilling 27, died in a bus accident last month.

She is concerned over the training of the firm's Polish drivers. Some are said to have a poor grasp of English.

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Former taxi driver

The background to these events.

Manchester Evening News

December 21, 2006 Thursday

Bus firms face safety charges

T wo bus companies will appear before the Traffic Commissioner tomorrow to answer charges of poor maintenance and breaches of rules on drivers' hours.

Commissioner Beverley Bell will hear evidence against Greater Manchester operators GM Buses and its sister company UK North.

One driver from GM Buses is on police bail until next month following the death of window cleaner Martin Pilling, 27, from Worsley. Mr Pilling died after his "cherrypicker" crane was in a collision with one of the company's buses in Wilmslow Road, Rusholme, last month.

Several weeks later police raided both companies' depot in Gorton Lane, Gorton, alongside officials from the Vehicle and Operator Services Agency, and seized a computer.

Ms Bell will investigate whether the firms have conformed to the terms of their operators' licences and ask them to answer allegations that their staff breached rules on drivers' hours.

The M.E.N. understands that the allegations do not relate directly to the accident when Mr Pilling fell from his platform while cleaning the canopy at Opal Estates' Wilmslow Park apartment block but may result from records seized during the raid.

The hearing is likely to take several hours and Ms Bell may reserve judgement until a later date.

In the worst cases, she has the power to revoke a company's licence to operate and can ban individual buses from the road if they are found to be faulty. UK North emerged in the mid 1990s as a successor to Glossop-based Mybus which went into liquidation. In 2003, deputy traffic commissioner Mark Hinchliffe said UK North had a "disgraceful" maintenance record and had put "dangerous" buses on the road as he slashed the operating licence from 35 buses to 25 because of safety fears.

The company hit the headlines again in September when it began running buses every five minutes along the A6 from Stockport on the 192 service in competition with Stagecoach.

And it took on Stagecoach once again when it put on 12 buses an hour on the 85/86 route between Chorlton and Manchester, engulfing one stop in Piccadilly Gardens and leading to massive queues in Mosley Street which even trapped Metrolink trams.

No-one at the firm's Gorton depot was available to comment.
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Seems like this thread is of a similar nature to the "cabbies face english test". Yet the Government allow a driving licence to be valid here and firms are left to carry the can. Don't employ them and you are racist, do employ and you haven't trained them. Would you expect a person with vocational entitlement on their licence to at least be able to drive in a straight line, if they can't its YOUR fault. Solution, don't give them a licence in the first place until they have received instruction and test in both language and driving skills IN this country.

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you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.

Well on the plus side I suppose at least the drivers are PCV licensed, unlike the tuk tuks along the road in B&H, but this is yet more evidence that operators will allow anything to drive their motors if they can save a bob or two.

Times will change, it's just one has to wonder how many people are going to die before it does.

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IDFIMH

i think its more about "deregulation" i.e. any tom dick and harry could operate a bus service, they did, and the rest as they say is history...

No doubt the data on this computer will play a major part in these proceedings.



Very few firms comply with the rules but this case proves that Traffic commissioners do very little in regulating these firms until investigation is forced upon them by tragic incidents such as this.



I suspect the allegations arise from what was found on the computer.



Profits before safety.



Buses are one of the biggest pollutants on our roads today yet this outfit is allowed to operate a service every five minutes in addition to other companies who operate a similar service probably every ten minutes. I suggest this would mean a bus every 3 minutes or so or even less, what a ridiculous situation.



The whole situation is ridiculous when you have these amounts of buses flooding a service in order to try and kill off the opposition. The only reason they can run around like this practically empty is because of the subsidised fuel grant. I bet they wouldn't run so many buses if the fuel grant wasn't available?

Regards

JD

2003 report on the background to the "profit before safety charge" levelled at bus company UK North. Three years later a window cleaner is knocked off a crane while cleaning windows and killed.

Back in 2003 a company spokesman said "We had a recruitment drive but the type and quality of staff we needed were not forthcoming".

It would appear that their solution to "quality staff" was to recruite Eastern Europeans. The end result is the needless death of a young man.
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Evening News

February 5, 2003

Shamed bus firm told to cut services

A MINNOW bus company which put the battle for more routes before passenger safety has been ordered to cut its services.

UK North had a "disgraceful" maintenance record and had put "dangerous" buses on the roads of Manchester, it was claimed at a public hearing. The traffic commissioner's inquiry slashed the company's operating licence from 35 buses to 25 because of safety fears.

The Gorton operator - involved in a battle for passengers with bigger rivals - has been given eight weeks to decide which of the 28 public services it runs to the south of the city it will axe. Student Holly Parker died after being struck by a UK North bus in Oxford Street last year. Although the driver and the firm has been absolved of any blame in her death, the bus involved was later found to have a defective tyre and the company was prosecuted.

The company has been involved in a bitter battle with rivals Stagecoach on several routes and reported the giant to the traffic commissioner, alleging dirty tricks, two years ago. The public inquiry in Leeds was told that last February, UK North decided to increase its registered fleet from 25 to 35. But it competed for more routes "at the expense of maintenance", said deputy traffic commissioner Mark Hinchliffe. "To put it crudely, the eye was taken off the ball." After a trouble-free year in 2001, government vehicle inspectors ordered faults to be rectified on 18 occasions during 2002.

Some of the faults were so serious that the buses were ordered off the road until they were fixed. Vehicle inspector Timothy Steele said: "They (the firm) seem to have grown too quickly." Company secretary Vincent Casale said they had bought 16 second-hand buses with which to expand but then found there was "significantly more work required than we were led to believe." He added: "We had a recruitment drive but the type and quality of staff we needed were not forthcoming."

Eventually they hired specialist consultant Mike Greenwood to sort out the maintenance problem and he joined the staff. Jonathan Backhouse, for the company, asked Mr Hinchliffe to accept that they had "addressed the problems in a systematic and logical manner". He said that they were preparing an appeal against the tyre conviction which followed the accident. Mr Hinchliffe said: "I accept that there is no evidence that the operator was responsible for the fatality." But, he added, "There was a decline into poor standards of maintenance and the fielding of dangerous buses on roads."

He was impressed with Mr Greenwood's reorganisation, adding: "Without that, this licence would have gone."
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From September 15, 2006 highlighting the "queues of empty buses" running around manchester.

Push for inquiry into bus chaos

A PUBLIC inquiry may be held next week to bring an end to the bus wars crippling city centre Manchester.

Queues of empty buses have been holding up traffic and inconveniencing commuters for two weeks as Stagecoach and UK North fight for passengers on the lucrative Manchester to Chorlton route.

Beverley Bell, the north west traffic commissioner, granted special powers over service frequencies, boarding conditions and waiting times to city transport bosses.

But go-slows are still forcing scores of commuters to get off buses early and public safety is still at risk.
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Well in some areas the bus service is better than it has ever been.

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IDFIMH

in london buses are worse than ever , remember years ago when people used to be proud to do these jobs .. you use to hear of people working for london transport for 30 years , nowdays 3 months they had enough ..