HEREFORDSHIRE'S best-known bus operator has been ordered to take 20 per cent of its fleet off the road after several 'school-run' vehicles were found to be unsafe.

Family firm Yeomans Canyon Travel, who carry thousands of children across the county every week, faced a public inquiry to deal with concern over coach safety.

The name 'Yeomans' has been synonymous with local travel for much of the last century, helping to keep Herefordshire moving during the darkest days of the Second World War.

But a string of buses, many of which are used on a daily basis by Hereford's leading schools, were found last autumn to have potentially dangerous mechanical faults.

Swooping on the firm with a number of spot-checks, examiners found broken exhausts, defective brakes, seats held together by protruding staples and malfunctioning emergency doors.

One headrest was fastened by 'long, sticking-out' screws. The inquiry was told that if the bus had braked sharply a passenger could have been badly injured by 'head-butting' the screws.

Director Nigel Yeomans, whose grandfather founded the business 80 years ago, told the inquiry that new buses had been introduced and drivers had been re-trained to report problems.

But the day before traffic commissioner David Dixon held the inquiry at Hereford's Shirehall, a Yeomans bus was spotted with diesel pouring dangerously from a missing fuel cap.

Mr Dixon also heard allegations of how a driver swore and slammed the brakes on deliberately after a bus full of school children from Weobley shouted at him that he had gone the wrong way.

Several of the youngsters were injured as the bus suddenly came to a halt, but the driver denied trying to hurt them.

Nigel Yeomans insisted vandalism by pupils was out of control on the school runs.

His assistant even alleged that children from one county high school had started to throw seats from moving vehicles.

But Mr Dixon replied that bad behaviour from youngsters was part of the 'bread and butter' of school contracts and operators needed to ensure that their passengers were safe at all times.

The inquiry also heard claims about Yeomans' drivers taking wrong routes, travelling without correct destination boards and arguing with motorists in 'road-rage' incidents.

Yeomans were told that there had been 'a failure to run their business in an adequate fashion over the last few years' and that 'things should never have got into the state that they had.'

As a punishment, they were ordered to reduce their fleet from 62 to 50 buses from July 31.

Meanwhile, another firm, H & H Motors, of Ross-on-Wye, who have contracts with John Kyrle and the Bishop of Hereford's Bluecoat School, has been given a warning over its future conduct.

A number of its buses had prohibition orders placed upon them, but the owners assured the inquiry that there would be no repeat of the problems.