How School Trip to Bristol Zoo Ended in Chaos

By David James

A bus company boss was ordered to apologise to a school headteacher after sending out a faulty bus – with a driver who didn’t speak English.

A second driver’s English was so bad, he had to follow elephant signs to find Bristol Zoo.

Carl Hookings, of Barry, faced a public inquiry over safety problems at GM coaches of Bridgend – just two weeks after he was criticised for time-keeping at another of his firms, EST buses in the Vale of Glamorgan.

A string of safety failures at the Bridgend firm was revealed at Cardiff County Court.

But Transport Commissioner Nick Jones said what concerned him most was the complaint of St Athan Primary School headteacher Frances Jones after a trip to Bristol Zoo descended into farce.

The court heard the driver was having trouble changing gears and when the coach broke down at Culverhouse Cross, he had to ask one of the teachers to ring his bosses and relay their instructions.

In a letter, headteacher Frances Hopkins told the Transport Commissioner: “He was heard muttering in broken English: ‘I told them the bus was broken’.”

Through a teacher, the driver was told to pump the clutch hard and the bus limped along to a service station where the children were met by a second driver and bus.

He understood so little English he could not read directions to Bristol Zoo where the party was going and had to follow elephant tourist signs.

Although Mr Hookings blamed his staff for the incident and for failing to implement a new safety regime, Mr Jones told him: “As managing director, the buck stops with you.”

Mr Jones ordered him to apologise “fulsomely” to Mrs Hopkins.

The safety failures at GM were revealed in an inspection on October 19, 2006, and two in May this year.

After the October inspection, Mr Hookings wrote to the examiners to say he had replaced the maintenance system at GM coaches, based in Cefn Cribbwr, with the system used by EST at Llandow.

But vehicle examiner Kevin Gist told the court: “The operator said he had replaced the maintenance system with one operated by a sister company. This had not been done. The maintenance system was the same.”

Of 14 buses inspected on May 1, only two were given a clean bill of health. One of the faulty buses had 18 problems, including a fractured seat frame, trip hazard, direction indicator not working and leaky fuel patch.

Mr Jones said: “This sort of think is pretty sloppy.”

A sheaf of MoT results was also shown to the court, revealing that out of 38 tests, only 15 buses had passed the first time. In road-side inspections, the firm – which runs school routes and does school trips – also had a 38 per cent failure rate which Mr Jones said was “unacceptably high”.

Mr Hooking, of St James Crescent, Barry, told the court he would solve the safety problems at GM coaches by importing the maintenance regime from EST buses.

He said: “Perhaps we didn’t do a good job of it but we were attempting to address the problems.”

And he blamed two former employees,.

In his ruling, Transport Commissioner Mr Jones stripped the firm of six of its licences so it can only operate 12 instead of 18 coaches and insisted on a series of undertakings.

(c) 2007 South Wales Echo. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.