Speeding Kingsley businessman pleads with court to keep his licence

A businessman who renovates vintage vehicles and who is turning a tragic pub into a music centre for young people has been allowed to stay in the driving seat despite accumulating 12 penalty points on his driving licence.

Magistrates agreed that to ban Stephen James Travis from driving would cause exceptional hardship.

Travis, 41, runs Triumph Nuts in Morley Road, Kingsley near Frodsham, but he gave his address as The Funk and Soul Café Bar in Holyhead.

He said that he had bought the former Blossoms public house in the town.

It had a tragic past because a landlord had been unlawfully killed by one of the customers, he said.

He told Flintshire Magistrates’ Court at Mold that it was currently ‘a building site’ but he was converting it into a music centre with free instruments for young people.

“It is a new project which I have taken over and rebuilding into a youth type centre,” he explained.

Travis said there were a lot of drug and alcohol problems in the town.

His own children were over 18 now. He himself went to Anglesey for family holidays “hence why I want to put something back into the town,” he said.

Materials were needed and he needed to be able to drive to keep the project going, he explained.

Travis told the court he also needed his driving licence in order to help care for his elderly father who was seriously ill, and to run the two businesses.

In the other company he specialised in renovating vintage Triumphs, TR6, TR2, Spitfires and Heralds.

He advertised nationally, would travel all over the country to find vehicles and he also had customers in Spain and Portugal, he said.

Without a driving licence, he would have to close the business within four weeks.

“It could not sustain a dry period of work,” he said.

The business employed two people.

Travis already had nine penalty points on his driving licence.

He admitted that on May 25 last year that he drove at 37mph in a 30mph limit in a Peugeot 206 on the A5 at Bryngwran, Anglesey.

Magistrates imposed three penalty points bringing the total to 12 but said they would not disqualify him because of what they had heard in relation to his father’s health.

They had also considered the employment difficulties and the effect on employees, although they said that was of lesser concern.

He had credit for his guilty plea and it was not the most “excessive speed that we have dealt with today,” said chairman Terry Stoneham.

Travis thanked the magistrates sand said: “I will be taking a lot more care while driving in future.”