A limousine hire company has been fined £10,000 and the owner given a two-year suspended jail sentence after the firm was caught transporting 10 school prom passengers illegally.
The group of school pupils were being transported to their prom in Wolverhampton when the police and VOSA officials swooped on the white hummer limo as part of their planned crackdown on rogue operators.
After the hummer limo was pulled over the authorities discovered it didn’t have the appropriate certificate of fitness needed to transport 10 passengers. However the boss of A2Z Limos 4 U, Bilal Aziz, attempted to cover up the failure by producing a piece of paper which it submitted to VOSA which indicated that one of the passengers had employed the limo on a self-hire basis, which would mean that the 16-year-old girl and her family were responsible.
Handwriting experts were called in and they found that the signature of the 16-year-old on the aforementioned piece of paper had been copied from the prom-goers original booking form.
The brother of the limo hire boss, Iqbal Aziz was driving the white limousine at the time of the incident. He admitted charges of driving without a tachograph, and failing to produce a record sheet, and the use of a PSV operators licence with intent to deceive.
The limo hire company also admitted the aforementioned charges and the additional charges of using a public service vehicle without a certificate of fitness, and also operating a vehicle without third party insurance or a test certificate.
They were fined a total of £10,000 and ordered to pay £600 costs, plus Bilal Aziz received a two-year suspended sentence and told to undertake 200 hours of unpaid work.
Information sourced from http://www.expressandstar.com/news/2010/07/28/limo-hire-firm-fined-10k-for-illegal-ride/
