Hard working transport boss John Keeping has been dogged by bad luck. Yesterday we reported on how he was defrauded of £164,000. Today he has found out he may have to shut down his business.

JOHN Keeping thought he had suffered enough bad news after being defrauded out of £164,000 by a former employer but today he found he may lose his business.

Mr Keeping, 59, has received notice from Philip Brown, traffic commiss-ioner for the Western area, that he can run his business, Keeping Transport Ltd, under an interim operating licence at the former Bamptons yard off Stratton Road until 11.59pm on Sept-ember 30, but after that it will be revoked.

On Tuesday, former employee Margaret Lesley Cross, 62, was jailed for two years after admitting writing fraudulent cheques payable to her sister's name and pocketing the cash herself. She pleaded guilty to 23 fraud charges and asked for 110 counts to be taken into consideration.

Swindon Crown Court heard that the fraud started as Mr Keeping's wife, Sally, contracted cancer and Cross was given more and more responsibility.

Cross started stealing from the firm two months before Mrs Keeping's death in June 1997, and carried on until she was arrested in May 2001 for a number of fraud offences.

Since then, Mr Keeping has run three lorries from the former Bamptons yard, but residents have claimed that it was impossible for them to sleep or use their gardens.

The case was taken to a public inquiry for the traffic commissioner to consider all the facts.

Until September 30, rigid operating hours have been imposed, from 7am to 7pm Monday to Friday, from 7am to noon on Saturdays and a complete operating ban on Sundays and bank holidays.

Mr Keeping said that the designated hours make running his business from the site, which relies on some early morning deliveries, unfeasible.

"I must be the unluckiest bloke out there," he said.

"Basically I've got until September 30 and after that I could be out of business.

"I had to move to this smaller, more secure site after the company lost all its money because of the fraud.

"Now I've got to make a decision whether or not to shut the lot down.

"Bamptons used to operate a commercial vehicle and body repair shop. But it is a residential site.

"The only reason we went there was because of the fraud. We tried to survive and I did what I had to do.

"I hung in there to see Cross go to prison, but it could be the end for Keeping Transport.

"I can't sleep, I can't eat, and when I see all this on the television and in the papers it makes me break down. It hits me hard."

Keeping Transport has been based at the former Bamptons yard since last November.

Before that the business was based at sites in Cheney Manor and then Transfer Bridges, where, in an isolated incident, £10,000 worth of diesel was stolen.

In December 2000, Mr Keeping's former lover Jeanette Palmer, then 48, escaped jail after dousing his home with petrol and setting it alight.

They vowed to stay together after she was spared a prison sentence at Bristol Crown Court in favour of two years' probation. They are no longer a couple.

Brian Cockbill, of Coleview, who has campaigned against the business running from the former Bamptons site, said: "The kind of disturbance we are talking about is a man with a heart condition being woken up before 6am thinking his house was being broken into, and phoning the police, because of the noise."