Jail for notorious Leamington cowboy builder

A NOTORIOUS cowboy builder from Leamington has been jailed for conning customers and suppliers by continuing to trade and setting up a new business after he had been made bankrupt.

Warwick Crown Court heard how Paul Henstone had left a trail of unfinished and unsatisfactory work for which he had been paid, and had run up debts to his suppliers.

He pleaded guilty to acting as a director of Blackdown Construction Ltd between December 2006 and December 2007 while prohibited because he was an undischarged bankrupt.

Henstone, 41, of Bankfield Drive, was jailed for eight months for that offence, with a consecutive eight-month sentence for three frauds which he also admitted.

Steven Bailey, prosecuting for the Department of Business Innovation and Skills, said in 2007 Solihull magistrates had fined Henstone £1,000 and ordered him to pay £5,000 compensation for recklessly making false statements.

That had followed a contract his company Blackdown Construction Ltd had undertaken to build an extension which he had left unfinished and subsiding.

“He was a cowboy builder behaving in a wider context of business malpractice. He exhibited cavalier dishonesty by treading as a director although he was an undischarged bankrupt, from very soon after the bankruptcy order.”

Mr Bailey said that had been made in December 2006, after which Henstone should not have continued to act as a director of the company.

But he did so, despite being warned by the Official Receiver in February the following year – and eventually the company itself was wound up with debts of £57,657 in February 2008.

The company was able to obtain credit by failing to declare Henstone was an undischarged bankrupt, and he also got work he would not have been given if his customers had known.

They were then left in the lurch by Henstone who, in a judgement at Coventry County Court in 2009, was described by the judge as ‘a cowboy builder.’

Sangeeta Bhatia and her husband employed Blackdown Construction in 2006 to carry out extensive work to their home in Leamington, for which they paid Henstone a total of £55,000 as well as having paid for some of the materials themselves.

But after four years the work had still not been completed, and they ended up having to pay a further £36,000 to another builder to carry out rectification work because of the poor job Henstone had done.

Neither they nor other customers who paid him amounts of between £9,250 and £104,650 for work which was carried out to a poor standard would have used his company if they had known he was bankrupt and should not have been trading.

Henstone was arrested in October 2007 and given bail, but then set up another company called Rock Construction and Roofing using the name of Harvey Midgley as its director. In fact Mr Midgley was someone who worked for Henstone on occasions on a cash basis and knew nothing about it.

But using Mr Midgley’s name, Henstone set up credit lines with local businesses and ran up thousands of pounds in debts.

Neil Skinner, defending, urged the judge not to send Henstone, who is married with four children and has the offer of a job in Dorset, immediately to prison, a plea ignored by Recorder David Hall who said “only a custodial penalty will suffice,” and who also disqualified Henstone from acting as a director for five years.

Stratford Observer

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