A COACH company has been ordered to cut the number of vehicles it operates from 32 to 20.

Traffic Commissioner Christopher Heaps said he was not convinced that Tim's Travel, based in Dorset Road, Sheerness, had the management ability to operate a fleet of its current size.

The ruling takes effect from November 1 as, according to director Tim Lambkin, 30 of the firm's vehicles are committed to contracts "all summer".

Mr Heaps said the company must let him know if a monthly payment of £5,000 due under a financial arrangement with creditors is not made.

He was giving his ruling after a public inquiry stemming from Vehicle Inspectorate reports about maintenance problems and the operator's failure to hand over tachograph charts, books, registers and other documents.

Mr Heaps said the firm's failure to comply with demands to deliver the charts, and director Tim Lambkin's breach of an undertaking to hand them over, cast doubt on the operator's repute.

But Mr Heaps said the company's failures had been "due to unacceptable inefficiency rather than a deliberate rejection of its responsibilities and I am able -just - to determine that its repute has not been lost".

Tim's Travel had exceeded an overdraft facility of £15,000 with a bank, though it no longer had that facility. But recent bank statements showed the account to be in credit with money provided regularly from a factoring agreement.

Mr Heaps said that in future he wanted the firm to send him copies of all bank statements on a monthly basis. Mr Lambkin was not available for comment.