Council backs tyre campaign
HALTON Borough Council was last night due to back a campaign banning the use of tyres more than a decade old on commercial vehicles.
Cllr Bill Woolfall of the Birchfield ward in Widnes proposed a motion at a Full Council meeting concerning the Tyred initiative.
The document which went before councillors said in September 2012 a coach bound for Liverpool carrying 53 people from the Bestival music festival on the Isle Of Wight ‘left the road’ and crashed into a tree.
It instantly killed three people – Michael Molloy, 18, Kerry Ogden, 23, and coach driver Colin Daulby, 63, and left others with ‘life changing’ injuries.
The inquest into the crash found the vehicle’s front nearside tyre was older than the coach itself at 19 years and was ‘responsible’ for the crash.
The document said: “In 2014, Liverpool City Council unanimously agreed a motion in support of Michael’s mother Frances calling for a change in the law requiring a ban on tyres older than six years on commercial vehicles.
“Despite the widespread public and political support for this cam- paign, no change in the law has been made, shamefully leaving others at risk from faulty or dangerous tyres.
“Council notes that Frances Molloy has launched Tyred to change the law to ban the use of tyres older than 10 years on commercial vehicles.”
The motion said the council ‘wholeheartedly supports Tyred’ and sought Cllr Rob Polhill to write to Prime Minister Theresa May and Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn to ● call for cross-party support for a law change.
The council is poised to support the Tyred campaign until a law change is achieved and is drawing the attention of the Local Government Association to its view that the concerns be ‘fully addressed’.
Council chief executive David Parr is also being asked to write to Runcorn and Widnes schools calling on them to require coach and bus operators they use for trips to adhere to the Tyred campaign.