Car trader sold unroadworthy vehicles

Both Qamar Ashfaq, director of James Hudson Motors, in Formans Road, Sparkhill, and the company admitted a range of offences, including:

• 17 offences under the Road Traffic Act 1988 of selling an unroadworthy vehicle;
• 17 offences under the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008 of advertising vehicles using false information likely to deceive the average consumer – namely, that vehicles were in excellent condition when they were not;
• One offence under the same act of failing to carry out an adequate inspection of vehicles before offering them for sale;
• Seven offences under the same act for failing to state on advertisements on their website that the vehicles were insurance write-offs.

Ashfaq was fined £1,000 and ordered to pay £3,000 costs, while the company was fined £1,000 and £6,000 costs. The court also ordered the forfeiture of the 17 unroadworthy vehicles – which had a total retail value of £31,235 – and disqualified Ashfaq from being a company director for five years.

The case was brought by Trading Standards officers from Birmingham City Council after they carried out a forecourt inspection on 8 November 2016, alongside an expert vehicle examiner and West Midlands Police.

The vehicles seized included a BMW, a Mercedes Benz, three Jaguars, a Volkswagen Golf and a Mitsubishi Shogun. All were described as being in excellent condition, but were found to be poorly maintained with faults including worn brake pads, dents in the bodywork, contaminated power steering fluid and, in one particularly serious case, a missing spring clip on the rear nearside brake pad retaining pins which rendered the vehicle dangerous to use.