A FORMER bus driver hoping to set up his own travel firm was branded “clueless” amid suspicions he was acting as a frontman for a Midland businessman whose own company had collapsed.

Daljit Bhatti, aged 23, was told by West Midlands Traffic Commissioner Nick Jones on Tuesday that “no-one could think you would run a business and run it competently and safely”.

Mr Jones said he feared Mr Bhatti, of Warwick Road, Acocks Green, was “a front for someone else” during a public enquiry at the commissioner’s offices in Edgbaston.

Mr Bhatti was applying for an operator’s licence to run 16 buses from a base in Wharfdale Road, Tyseley, under the business name Birmingham Travel Limited.

He said he wanted to become a businessman after working as a cleaner at Travel West Midlands and then a bus driver for AMPM Travel Limited, which has since gone into liquidation having been based in Tyseley’s Wharfdale Road.