THE director of a chauffeur firm whose clients included British Airways staff, BBC talent and luxury hotel guests has been banned from the industry for three years after it emerged he had been running the business without a licence.
Graham Pender, owner of Edinburgh-based Chauffeurline Coaches Ltd and Chauffeurline (UK) Ltd, has been disqualified from operating passenger vehicles or acting as a transport manager for three years.
Chaffeurline's contracts including transporting the pilots and cabin crews for all major airlines landing at Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen Airports, as well as shuttling celebrities such as Tom Jones, Fleetwood Mac and Lionel Richie to and from BBC studios.
His fleet of 19 luxury vehicles - including six top of the range Jaguar XJLs and three 16-seater Mercedes minibuses - also did business with some of Scotland's most upmarket hotels, including the Balmoral in Edinburgh, as well as cruise liner companies such as P&O and Caribbean Cruises.
However, an inquiry has heard that the business had been run illegally since November 2014 when Chauffeurline Coaches Ltd - previously known as Cramond Coaches Ltd - ceased trading as a result of an associated company going into liquidation.
Chauffeurline (UK) Ltd continued operating vehicles under the licence held by Chauffeurline Coaches Ltd - despite the fact that operator licences are not transferable between businesses.
Mr Pender, who was declared bankrupt in 2007, had previously been called before Traffic Commissioner in 2013 as the director of then-named Cramond Coaches over a lack of financial standing.
Operators are required to have a minimum amount of money set aside at any one time as a condition of their licence, but the 2013 inquiry heard that Mr Pender "does not see why he should keep money available in this particular business because he wants to expand all his other businesses".
At the time, his operator licences were reduced but not revoked as a penalty.
He subsequently changed the company's name from Cramond to Chauffeurline Coaches.
Miss Aitken, in a written ruling, said that Mr Pender had "self-servingly" operated his chauffeuring business, Chauffeurline (UK) Ltd without a licence from November 2014, after his application was rejected.
She said: "I do not doubt that [Mr Pender] has the ambition, can embrace modern ways of working, that he likes making money and knows the sense in putting on a nice show in sense of smartly presented vehicles and drivers and slickness of operation.
"However, I am charged with enforcing a regulated environment and I struggle with his attitude and commitment to such."
She added that the businessman had "shattered" the "fundamental trust which is at the heart of operator licensing".
Miss Aitken said Mr Pender was "no longer of repute and professional competence" as a result of his action and revoked his existing operator's licence with immediate effect.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here