Maverick Valleys bus operator Clayton Jones dies at 72

Martin Shipton

Controversial bus company operator and local politician Clayton Jones, who had frequent run-ins with various authorities over a period of decades, has died at the age of 72.

In the 1980s and 1990s Mr Jones served as a Plaid Cymru councillor on the old Mid Glamorgan County Council, and as deputy leader for a period of Taff Ely Borough Council, which also disappeared at the time of local government reorganisation in 1996.

At one time, Mr Jones ran Pontypridd-based Shamrock Travel, which grew from being a one-vehicle company into one of the biggest bus operators in south east Wales, with a 229-strong fleet of vehicles and 300 staff.

Banned

In 1993 he was banned from being a company director for five years after a county court judge ruled he had shown “commercial ineptitude” and “commercial mismanagement” in running a transport form. His bus, coach and taxi company Drysilver, which ran services in the Valleys, collapsed owing £143,243. The judge found against Mr Jones over a number of allegations made by the Official Receiver, including not keeping accounts in proper order, trading while insolvent and transferring assets and paying off a bank overdraft to the preference of himself and associates.

During the period when he was disqualified from being a company director, Mr Jones’ then wife Alyson Jones ran Shamrock. In 2006 they sold Shamrock Travel to the transport giant Veolia for £10m.

At the time of the sale, Mr Jones said: ‘” haven’t finished, I have got other interests.

” I started off as a driving instructor myself so I’m planning to get more involved with training ahead of the new EU Certificate for Professional Competence (CPC) for bus and lorry drivers.

He added: “I have a business in [North] Macedonia which develops seats and bodies for Mercedes mini-buses.

“At the end of the day you go where the market is and the market is out there.”

However, Mr Jones couldn’t resist the temptation to set up another bus company, and also in 2006 he set up Heart of Wales – a significantly smaller operation than Shamrock.

Conflict

Within a few years, the firm was in conflict with the Traffic Commissioner, who barred it from running services in Caerphilly following a series of complaints. These included that services ran late or not at all, and that the buses did not meet legal standards.

Traffic Commissioner Nick Jones said in a judgement that Mr Jones met the loose definition of a “rogue operator”. He wrote: “I have no hesitation in confirming that the operator deserves to be put out of business. The legitimate industry and other road users would rightly expect me to do so.”

The Traffic Commissioner made several other criticisms, including that Mr Jones was a “malign” influence. Further on, he wrote: “The travelling public, compliant bus operators and the licensing system as a whole will benefit considerably as a result of this operator ceasing to have a PSV licence.”

But in reviewing the Traffic Commissioner’s decision, Judge Mark Hinchliffe decided Mr Jones should have been allowed to run the services. In a submission to the judge, Mr Jones had said he would be obliged to make 20 workers redundant if forced to give up the Caerphilly bus routes and communities would be left without services.

In the event, Heart of Wales went into liquidation and it was thought Mr Jones’ bus career might be at an end.

Comeback

Later, however, he had a modest comeback, running local buses in the Caerphilly area. But this enterprise also came to grief. On February 14 2022 the punctuality of the newly registered routes was checked. The 12 routes were failing to operate properly and a punctuality monitoring exercise was carried out between February 14 and May 6 2022. The findings of the 499 observations were a 26.85% punctuality rate, with 68.14% of services failing to operate.

Mr Jones was ordered to pay a penalty of £3,200.

In his leisure time, he was a keen sports fan. He was also a sponsor of Pontypridd United FC,

The club issued a statement which said: “It is with deep sadness that we announce the passing of Clayton Jones, a long-time sponsor and one of the founding members of our club.

“Clayton was a truly larger-than-life figure, whose passion for football, both at our club and on the international stage, was evident to all who knew him. He also held a great fondness for the game of cricket.”

Mr Jones fell out with Plaid Cymru, believing the party had moved too far to the left. He joined the more right wing nationalist party Gwlad, and became a representative of it on Ynysybwl and Coed-y-cwm Community Council until his death.