Marlborough garage back on the road again (From The Wiltshire Gazette and Herald)

Marlborough garage back on the road again

2:10pm Thursday 4th February 2010

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Dean's Garage in Marlborough was back in action this week, six weeks after it was shut down by official receivers acting on instructions from the High Court.

To the surprise of local motorists, however, the garage that has a reputation for having among the dearest petrol prices in the UK reopened with pump prices dropped below those of other local garages.

A member of the staff at the London Road garage confirmed that Zubair Dean was still the owner but said: “He is not here at the moment.”

The garage re-opened on Thursday with its fuel prices slashed to £107.9 for unleaded petrol and £109.9 for diesel. There was a catch, however, with customers having to pay cash only.

But some motorists vowed that no matter how much Mr Dean reduced his prices they would not buy fuel from his garage. Father-of-two Ian Large from College Fields said: “It’s as cheap as Tesco, which is quite remarkable, but I will never buy petrol there because of his reputation for high prices. I would rather push my car to Fyfield or Chiseldon than buy fuel there.”

Property developers and some other owners of filling station chains had expressed an interest in buying the business with its valuable, large river frontage site.

One garage owner from Gloucester said that if he could buy the garage his fuel prices would match those of supermarkets and he would open a 24 hour shop as well.

He said: “That place should be a gold mine. ”

A spokeswoman for the Government’s Insolvency Service that was involved in the closing of Dean’s on December 15 declined to comment.

However a police source said: “He was closed down because of unpaid tax but it was a relatively small sum, just a few thousand pounds. That has now been paid and he was told he could re-open.”

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