Police ensure school transport is safe (From Free Press Series)

Police ensure school transport is safe

A POLICE operation to check the safety of Gwent's school transport found that the number of defective vehicles fell, from nine percent last year to six percent.

One Torfaen vehicle was found to have faulty breaks and it was immediately banned from moving on, and was given a prohibition order. Police said that the coach was not contracted by the local authority.

Operation Coachman was carried out by Gwent Police traffic officers and Vehicle Operator Services Agency (VOSA) staff. Throughout Gwent a total of 111 coaches and private hire vehicles were stopped and tested.

The Testing centre at New Inn served as one of the locations to pull in vehicles for testing. Other locations across Gwent also targeted school vehicles at St Joseph's High School, Duffryn, an industrial estate in Ystrad Mynach and King Henry VIII comprehensive school in Abergavenny.

The vehicles were checked for a number of defects including poor suspension, faulty brake pipes and faulty seat belts. Across the county seven vehicles were given prohibition orders.

Inspector Steve Corcoran from Gwent Police Road Policing Unit said: "This is a significant reduction in the numbers of prohibitions issued, the last Operation Coachman showed that 9-10 percent of vehicles stopped showed defects and in this latest Operation, only 6 percent showed defects. We will continue to work with our partner agencies, including VOSA and the local authority, to highlight the importance of this issue and to ensure the standard of vehicles taking local children to school continues to improve."