A BUS company has undertaken urgent inspection of part of its fleet after a blaze destroyed one of its vehicles.

Velvet called in five buses, the same model as the number 67 service which caught fire in Martyr Worthy near Winchester, after 45 people had to be flee minutes before the bus was engulfed in flames.

Bosses at the Eastleigh-based firm are concerned the other vehicles may have similar faults.

Managing director, Phil Stockley, confirmed that extra checks were necessary to ensure no further incidents occurred.

“We’ve brought the others in to make sure everything is in working order to hopefully avoid any such incident happening again,” he said. We’ve put on another bus to replace the one damaged yesterday so that the service can continue.

“All buses are inspected every four weeks but we brought in the ones of the same batch to carry out additional checks.”

Mr Stockley confirmed no faults had been found and that no services had to be suspended while checks were carried out.

The vehicle quickly became engulfed in flames after the bus was evacuated at Martyr Worthy at approximately 7.45am on Monday. No one was hurt.

Mr Stockley thanked his driver, who tried to tackle the blaze himself with an extinguisher after he was alerted to the fire by a student on her way to Peter Symonds College.

“Mr Stubbs is a very experienced driver, one of the first when the company first started, and is a professional to the end.”