Customers left waiting

Sonia Gable | Friday, 13 October 2006 Source: Searchlight

A coach company owned by a BNP councillor left pensioners and disabled school children stranded. Now Barking and Dagenham council has launched an investigation into the business to find out whether it has contravened the code of conduct by which all councillors must abide.

Richard Barnbrook, leader of the BNP group on Barking and Dagenham council, distanced his party from Casters Coaches, which is owned by Cllr Sandra Doncaster and her husband Thomas. "It's not my business to check out the business activities of all my councillors," he told the Barking & Dagenham Recorder. "I have my own things to do."

Cllr Doncaster told the Recorder that disabled children from a Dagenham, east London, school were not picked up because the organiser of the trip had not confirmed the booking. Pensioners from sheltered accommodation in Buckhurst Hill were left standing in the hot sun because Cllr Doncaster had passed the job to another company while her coach was being repaired, and that company had let her down, she explained. She could not remember why another group of pensioners were left waiting in May.

Casters Coaches, which the Doncasters started in 1987, claims to offer "a cheap and comfortable vehicle" for "weddings, hen nights and day trips between Dagenham, Essex and the Isle of Wight". It also owns an 18-room Isle of Wight guest house.