The former head of the Strathclyde Partnership for Transport has pleased guilty to a motor offence and been fined more than £700, after retiring last year when a the Sunday Mail newspaper spotted he was driving an illegal closed car.

The Daily Record reports Gordon Maclennan, who earned £153,527 a year in his job as chief executive of SPT, was forced to quit after its sister paper the Sunday Mail newspaper revealed the scam.

He was pictured by a photographer in a VW Passat at his holiday home on the Isle of Lewis in August while another vehicle with the same registration number sat in his office car park.

The report says the scheme appears to have been motivated by a desire to save a few hundred pounds a year on road tax, MOT and insurance and is believed to have been going on for more than a decade.

A spokesman for Stornoway Sheriff Court has confirmed to the newspaper the businessman pleaded guilty to breaching the Vehicle Excise and Registration Act and was fined £706.

(Picture – Daily Record/Sunday Mail)